Sunday, June 3, 2012

An Ode to a Home

Its an anniversary of sorts for me. Right around this time two years ago, we set off on an adventure together. In May 2010 we sold my house in Maryland, packed everything up in a Penske truck, drove across America with my car in tow and my two cats, and arrived in Salt Lake City to find a place to settle for awhile. It is that trip across the country, and starting a new life, that inspired me to start this blog. I came up with the name My Scenic Byway on that drive.

After staying a week at a La Quinta Inn (they take pets) and hunting for a place to rent, we were just about to give up and consider putting our things in storage and shacking up with family out here for awhile, then the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, we found our dream rental house. It was perfect. We couldn't believe how lucky we were to find this place. So we moved in that Memorial Day weekend, two years ago.

Two years have flown by. Living in this house at the foot of a beautiful canyon in the Wasatch Mountains, looking down over Salt Lake City, our relationship and love has grown. We arrived and starting planning a wedding which took place just months after arriving here. We also experienced great loss and heartache here, unexpectedly losing a very important family member - making it feel like the timing of our decisions and arrival here to this place was all the more important.

Family and friends have shared this house with us. Because I work from home, I have spent an enormous amount of my time over the past two years physically in this house. All day, every day during the week, I am here in this house. This house has always felt safe, a refuge. Open and full of light. Many large windows looking out onto trees and mountains. The best kitchen I've ever had. The sounds and feel of the evening breezes that roll down the canyon rustling the aspen leaves on the trees in the front yard. The sounds of the quail who frequent our yard. The cherry trees in our front and back yard. I have loved this house.

And this is the house where we started our vision and dream to build our own house in California, in the high desert near Joshua Tree. My husband has owned land there for many years and has always had a dream to build there. His dream became our dream. We've spent much time in this house huddled over house plans on the dining room table or the back patio. Many nights sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, tv on, but not really watching as we were searching the internet for websites and photos to give us ideas about various aspects of home design. Our living/dining room is covered in house plans, models, design boards with photos, catalogues, etc. And now that room is also filling up with boxes because the vision has been realized and the house is being built, and we are moving. This is to be our last month in this wonderful house, this place of love and fond memories.

I become very attached to places. I love to travel, yet I also can find it tough to leave a place. Not so much a place as a space. The space we reside in and make our own - I love those spaces. It isn't that I don't want to leave them, I just find it to be an emotional and bittersweet experience. I am excited about our new home, and sad too to leave this home that has served us so wonderfully for two years. We knew we would only be here temporarily, but somehow the time flies by too fast, like it always does, and suddenly you find yourself packing boxes, saying goodbyes to neighbors, and staring at the birds and the trees and the kitchen and the walls and saying to this space "I will miss you." And sometimes shedding a few tears as you say it.

I am grateful to the universe that led us to this beautiful house, and for how it became such a wonderful first home for us to share together. I have memories and images that I will cherish from it always. It was a good, good house. I am excited for the next people who will rent this house and make their own memories here, just as I am excited for our new house and our new journey on the Scenic Byway.

June 3, 2012


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