If you decorate it, they will come...

November 28, 2005 | Category: In My Life

I know this couple, they're in love. They have a baby and each other and they are so happy that every time I am around them I have to promise myself not to compare my life to theirs.

Because, they really are happy. Right this minute. I mean, as I write this, they are porbably kissing or teaching their year-old toddler Portugese or piecing a quilt for the local AIDS hospice while there child gently sleeps.

Their home is comfortable in the way a home is when it has so much love and vibrancy. Their lives are spilled out on the walls, in little posters and pictures. Their kitchen is well organized, to acommodate both their talents. Their child's room is a haven.

This couple, I have known them a long time. And like my Aunt and Uncle, like my friends out of state, their world didn't happen by accident. It was a natural outcome of their shared dreams and the hard work they put into it.

I look around this house, and I see all the dreams we packed into our moving boxes with our incomplete china sets and our throw pillows. We headed out of the city with an infant, an unmatched collection of furniture, and big ideas.

We were going to have a home like that. We plotted it in our minds a thousands times.

This was where we would put that armchair we're going to buy someday. And this would be where we keep the menus from our favorite restaurants. Here is where we will track Bear's growth on the wall.

But then....

Well. Yeah. Then all that stuff happened and then we were miserable but we didn't give up and yet sometimes it does feel like what I keep thinking is progress is really just being stuck in the same place but on a new day.

And our house is like that. It isn't warm, and comfortable. It is rumpled, and unorganized, and it doesn't stay clean. There are pockets of sanctuary and long lines of chaos and construction. I feel jittery, looking around. And sad. And frustrated. And there were so many, many days when the only thing that kept me here was picturing Bear's face if ever I told him that it was time to leave.

And it was not so long ago.

But you know what? On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Christmas tree lot and we bought some real honest-to-goodness used-to-be-alive evergreen garland. And we wrapped it up in white lights and draped it around the front door.

Sure, our neighborhood is practically the universally agreed upon house-decorating Olympic winner of Pleasantville and a little scrap of lighted swag don't mean a hill of beans in land where National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is required viewing and folks start laying the concrete platforms for this year's giant Frosty display in September.

But we did it. All three of us. It was a crappy weekend, and it could have ended like so many before - rumpled, disorganized, unsatisfied, snapping.

But instead, and heaven help me I don't know how, we were standing in the misty rain in our socks, with pine needles stuck to our arms, grinning at the joy of a strand of white lights, and home.

You can't tell me we don't have the most gorgeous 16 feet of swag around.

I know it's not okay yet. I know, there's no need to tell me.

Yesterday morning, I cried in the shower. I wanted to rip down a wall in frustration. I didn't think I could take one more minute, one more hour, one more day of how hard it can be. It is so hard sometimes. I felt so strung tight. And I have ... no idea at all how the rest of the day got easier.

But it did.

It hurts. So much. So often. But we're here. We're all here, in this home right now. We're here, and I know it's not okay yet but tonight it sure feels okay. We're here and we do love each other. And by God, our door glows.

And I believe.

Share: Delicious! | Stumble It! |   Slashdot It!