It’s Sunday morning and I begin my daily tidy. Fold a load of laundry, empty last night’s dishes from the dishwasher. Bake oatmeal for easy breakfasts this week, load the dishwasher with breakfast dishes. Toss last week’s flowers, wash vases and fill with this week’s flowers. I go room by room, emptying trash cans and straightening up towels, pillows, my thoughts.
I’ve lived a few places in my life–a little San Diego bungalow where we’re pretty sure neighbors pitched in for landscapers to tame our wildly overgrown yard; a large Seattle apartment overlooking Lake Union which made its location between two somewhat shady “hotels” bearable; a three story townhouse in Portland where I could walk to a not only a boutique movie theater but a locally owned grocery store where you couldn’t swing a reusable grocery bag without hitting three hipsters. And now, the small town south.
I bought this house after knowing Stephen for less than a year. We met randomly when I lived in Oregon and he lived in Georgia and dated long distance for about six months before we knew we needed to live in the same town. We talked about him moving to Portland, about me moving to Georgia or about going somewhere completely new. We eventually decided on Georgia and not to move in together right away.
We knew pretty early that we wanted to get married but didn’t want to rush or put any pressure on ourselves and knew me moving across the country would be a big adjustment for both of us. I looked for a rental but didn’t find anything I liked and so we did a marathon real estate session over a weekend less than two months before I was supposed to move down here.
Despite the stress of selling my Portland house, taking a new role at work, leaving friends and family on the west coast, buying a house and moving across the country to the south, where at that point I had only spent about a week, it was all just … easy.
This house came on the market a few days before our real estate extravaganza. It was for sale by owner and Stephen just happened to turn down the street on a whim while going to dinner with a friend. The seller was fine with a close date almost two months out and I started plotting how I was going to turn the 80s almond colored explosion with a 90s Tuscan twist into a timeless classic.
Movers loaded up my townhouse, Stephen flew up to Portland and we piled in the car with Fisher to drive first to Boise, then Ogden, and onto Ft. Collins, Lincoln, St. Louis and Nashville before the final stretch home. Stephen would move in a year later. We got engaged a year after that and then married the following year.
I carried flowers into my office and took more into our bedroom, which I painted a deep purple when Stephen was in the process of packing up and clearing out his old house. It occurred to me how I have what I always wanted. All of those little apartments ago, I’d do the same thing on the weekend mornings. Putter around, enjoying my space and life, but thinking ahead to maybe getting married some day. To working from home in a cute office and continuing to spend my time reading and writing surrounded by dogs. And now here I am, enjoying the sunlight pouring through the windows feeling cozy and loved and oh so grateful.
These are tough times and I don’t want to minimize what any of us are going through. And yet, within that space there are still moments of absolute joy and peace.