I HAVE LIVED IN TWENTY TWO HOUSES
I have lived in twenty-two houses. Some worked their way under my skin like dirt under nail. And then there were those that were more like beautiful butterflies that mesmerize for a fleeting moment in time.
I realize I’m rare. To be tethered to one place for a long season is frightening, even stifling to both the nomad and artist who have taken up residence in me.
Twenty-two houses.
Not one uninteresting; each with something to love, many in need of great nurture, all whispering, “pick me,” “help me,” or “rest here for a while.”
Clay under hand. This was the mandate. Our “must haves” weren’t the creature comforts born of someone else’s dream but the raw corners of possibility that revealed themselves as more “challenge” than others were willing to take on.
We understood that we were stewards of place. And we shared this relentless compelling to caress the tired and neglected spaces into something revived and adored.
Fact—Bringing out the best in place always and forever brings out the best in the people who dwell within.
I have lived this truth over the span of forty years. It is not necessary to possess something forever to be willing to pour all of what you have in it for a spell. We sacrificed hands and backs to what we spoke of as our call. Like blood brothers, each open wound from the battle of plywood and plaster bonded us to place, nurturing its best into being as if a mother who loves completely knowing the time will come to let go.
And so we put down roots without hesitation, knowing that hesitating would mean that something essential will be missed. Life is short, not because others say it is, but because we live the essence of the phrase.
Fact—that sacred SANCTUARY resides within us no matter where the big Danes determine to lay down and stretch their long, lean legs.
Whether for two years or four, our tribe of five (plus Danes) has moved in cadence with the beating of one heart, unafraid of the sweeping inevitability of change…hungering for that change if it is to bring us to a better understanding of ourselves.
As I write I am looking out and beyond the garden to one row and then another of endless vines. I close my eyes and I am standing in the center of a fluid memory of other places—a rustic garden gate, a rock outcropping with views to the sea, an English garden lush in Spring.
The smell of lavender mixes with plaster and sweat and I’m completely swept away. In the space between then and now there is this knowing that permeates everything— three boys and a marriage grew strong enveloped in a kind of “security” that will never be found in the where we are but the who we take with us along the way.
I have lived in twenty-two houses.
In this, our nomadic life, we bring to each place our own whispered secrets and carve into its walls the DNA of our existence—home and inhabitants share a love affair that is one of twenty-two chapters about give and take, contentment and belonging, having and letting go. Fact—holding on too tightly often spoils the glorious gratefulness that temporal brings.
To rest something within palm without closing fingers makes it all so much more about being branch than cage. Freedom from the world’s notion of possession makes the encounter with the bird that much sweeter as it rests, for a time, and then soars beyond again.