Beyond The Windowpane

I am sitting in the prettiest bedroom that I have ever known, surrounded by sculptures and books. Above the desk are photos of a sunrise and sunset atop Cadillac Mountain, alongside a picture of my husband and me, and the poem Habitation by Margaret Atwood.

My windows look out to the backyard where our children played while growing up, where they went from infant swing to learning to pump their little legs to go higher and higher, where mud pies and friendships were formed, where they learned to negotiate and build other worlds. All the while, with their little black and white dog tagging along behind them.

This is the place where we learned to look up and wish upon the stars.

Now that everyone has grown, this is the place where we all gather to sit around the fire and drink a glass of wine as we share our lives with one another.

This room won’t be mine for much longer. That backyard beyond the windowpane will belong to another family soon. Their children will run and play and grow vegetables where once my children did.

The realization that this house will be someone else’s home fills me with gratitude. It is time. This place has given our children a sense of security, a place to call home. It has given them the confidence to explore. They now call other places “home” and that is how it should be.

This place has done its work. It has helped me come to terms with a lifetime of feelings of housing insecurity. Feelings that stemmed from being placed in the foster care system as a child and evicted from apartments as a teenager and even a period where we were without housing. At times, the feelings of housing insecurity grew larger than life in me, they stayed with me as an adult, sometimes hindering me so profoundly that I could not see the walls of our home that were right in front of me. Now I see them clearly and I am filled with gratitude.

We are choosing a different path now. Boxing up what we want to bring into our next great adventure. Blessing others with the things that we are ready to let go of. We have given each other permission to let go of whatever we are done with. Laying no claims to “but so and so gave that to you.”

That is just how we do things here – transparency and teamwork, love and lots of laughter. So much laughter. These humans that I share my life with have helped me to heal and they remind me of what’s important.

We will carry our memories forward and create new memories surrounded by different walls.
We will sit in a new backyard drinking wine and looking up at the stars, the very same stars that we wished upon all those years ago.