Homeless for the Moment

This morning my chiropractor recommended a local coffee shop, and so here I am at the Bankhead Bistro, with the crumbs of a delicious raspberry white chocolate scone on my plate and a steaming fresh cup of coffee beside my laptop. The sun streams in the window beside me, and the temperature is just right.

But they are playing country music.

From a radio station.

So not only are my ears tortured by the worst music known to man, but then they are jarred every eight minutes or so with annoying used car lot jingles and that guy telling me that I need a new mattress. It's bad.

But I forgot to bring earbuds, and I am otherwise perfectly comfortable, so I am hoping that my brain can eventually tune it all out. After all, if there's one thing at which a young mother excels, it is the art of tuning out irritating chatter and squawking.

But you will forgive me if my writing suffers?

This has been quite the winter. Last December, I casually asked a friend to help me choose paint colors so that we could think about finally painting the walls of our home (a task we promised ourselves we would tackle within a year of moving in... and here it is, five years later...). A month later, Tina the Master Decorator and I have concocted an evil (and gorgeous) plan to not only paint all the walls but the kitchen cabinets, too, and also to finally get rid of the popcorn on the ceilings, and oh yes (since everything will be out of the house already) also redo the floors. Funny how that happens. Tina calls it the Domino Effect, but it's definitely more like Library Shelves Falling Over in a Domino Effect.

Tina and I visited All the Floor Stores and took home All the Samples. We held countless pieces of painted foam core up to the walls of every room. We passed Instagram and Pinterest screen shots back and forth like notes down the pew during Sunday morning service. We occasionally asked for Philip's thoughts, and we let the kids romp around with the samples. (I cannot tell you how many times I had to search for tiny carpet squares under the couch or in the toy bins.)

Getting the kids to sit still so the movers could do their thing.

Because it would involve so much work (and so much mess), we decided to literally move out of our home in the hopes of making the work easier, faster, and less expensive. I spent a few weeks slowly transferring items to boxes, and then Philip constructed our own little Household Goods Warehouse in the garage using our extensive collection of IKEA bookshelves, so that we'd have a place for all the little things that populated our house - or at least all the little things that didn't go immediately into a donation bin or the trash. The day before we actually moved out, we hired some guys to move the rest of the furniture into an impressively tight configuration in the remaining space of our garage. It was like Tetris for Grown-ups, only more dangerous and requiring quite a bit more back strength.

Definition of a miracle. Also, Don't Touch.

And then, the Thursday before Spring Break, we left with all our clothes stuffed into our biggest suitcases. We spent the next ten days at Gram and Paps' house in East Texas, where we could relax a little and drink in the pine pollen and dog slobber while swinging on the back porch. Mom is recovering from major foot surgery, so we tried to keep it as low key as possible, but it was still a little wild. The kids loved (and feared) getting to know Dad's new dog (a stray) Sadie, and Mom and I enjoyed torturing Dad by renaming the dog right after he announced that he'd call her Queen Wilhelmina. The weather was cold and Sadie was persistent in needing attention, so we didn't spend as much time outside as usual, but we survived with only a slight case of cabin fever - easily mended by a Thursday morning trip to the zoo for the kids and me. And movies almost every night.

We wore matching "piggy tails" for this photo. 

Sarah made Gram read through all the Little House picture books during the week, alternated between loving the dog as her own and being so terrified that I had to carry her to and from the car, and often escaped up to the loft to quietly draw all afternoon. Luke diligently practiced his handwriting every morning and then spent the last two days poring over his reward: a new set of Pokemon cards. He took the little kids exploring every so often and loved seesawing with his fearless little brother (much to my dismay). He read LOTS of Calvin and Hobbes - and commandeered the paper every morning to read its funnies. Andrew forgot that he was potty trained (or maybe his mom did?) and largely roamed free and without rules all week. We skipped his nap the first day, but the misery he inflicted on us all that evening made certain that we would not make that mistake again. He spent hours following Paps around and was, of all of us, by far the most comfortable around the dog, snuggling her and walking with her as if she were his (large) teddy bear.

Paps's truck was the Main Attraction all week.

I enjoyed having a week without a schedule, getting to read and jog and eat from Mom's kitchen, but I also spent a good portion of my time stressing over light fixtures and cabinet hardware. Tina kept me posted on the work being done by sending photos and videos (complete with loud Tejano playing in the background), and I eventually began to feel like we were making some progress - and that there would one day be an end to the excruciating process of making a million tiny decisions.

We bring the zoo TO the zoo.

Please don't ask me to explain. I just can't.

As we reached the final weekend of Spring Break, Sarah tried to convince me to let her stay with Gram and Paps: "Mom, is swimming lessons before or after my birthday?" she asked one afternoon. "After," I innocently replied. And with a decided air, she declared, "Okay, then I will stay here with Gram and Paps until my birthday and then go home." Her birthday is May 18th. It was difficult to convince her that her plan was a no-go, and even though we decided to stay through Sunday and skip one day of school, I still felt as if I were dragging her away as a prisoner when we loaded up to head back to Fort Worth Monday morning.

But it was fun for all of us to see the house - in spite of the dust and mess and strangers and strangers' equipment strewn around. With quite a bit more work to be done, we had made plans to stay at a friend's lake house in Granbury for the rest of the time so that the kids could go to school and Philip to work.

Sneak Peek!!

So that's where we are, about halfway through the action. The lake house is its own fun adventure, but we haven't quite adjusted to the hour-long commute, and Andrew is FAR too comfortable running around on the dock, collecting stones to toss into the water... Each day, we stop by the house to see what's happening, and it's encouraging to see the progress that can be made in a day. Except on the days when no (visible) progress has been made. But overall, it's exciting, and we pray our thanks every night for a comfortable place to stay, for a beautiful home to remodel, for a friend to take care of the hard parts of that remodel, and for the workers who are blessing us with their gifts.

I have been especially blessed, during this time of disorientation and homelessness, to find solace, strength, hope, and intellectual engagement in Malcolm Guite's The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter. Each morning's reading reminds me of how much I love the poetry of language, and how grateful I am to a God who gives us such beauty in so many forms. I am drawn outside of myself - out of the choices of paint shades and chandelier shapes, out of the parenting challenges brought by gypsy living, out of the uncertainty of the future and the instability of the present - by these beautiful verses, each delving deep into the Mystery that only matters. It is for me as in Seamus Heaney's "Postscript":

You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Thank you, Lord, for blowing my heart right open. Always.