I bought myself a new shoe rack that accommodates thirty-six pairs of shoes. The bottom of my closet was covered in piles of shoes, and the scaredy-cat part of me didn't like digging through the shoes searching for pairs because of the possibility of crazy spider creatures and what not. I already have a hanging shoe organizer inside of my closet, but it only seems to work for my flats and other skinny shoes. So anyway, something else was in order for my chunkier shoes, such as heels and boots.
After all was sorted, I saw how motherhood has affected my shoe rack: my hanging organizer was full of sensible flats in all varieties of black, brown, and navy. The new rack was home to ten more pairs of shoes: two more pairs of flats (brown, black), three pairs of tennis shoes, one pair of clunky brown rubber-soled things, one pair of (flat, brown) boots, and three pairs of heels (black, brown, and fire-engine red). Seeing my shoe collection displayed in front of me, I was forced to think about a couple of very obvious truths. First of all, that pile o' shoes at the bottom of the closet made me think I had a much more sizable collection of shoes than I really had. I had forgotten at some point I had weeded out my heels from high school and early college. Second of all, out of the whole lot, I had exactly one pair of shoes that had any kind of sex appeal. I bought them three months ago, and I've never worn them before.
I say that motherhood changed my shoe rack because I'm not sure what else in my life has quite made me go from feeling sexy to frumpy in about eight hours as childbirth has. Let me tell you, the frump hung on both physically and emotionally. My body, well it was sagging after having my first baby. Skin was looser, posture was slumpy. I had a C-section, so my abs were shot. I was also just larger all-around; my feet were a whole size larger, and my waist and hips were two sizes larger. I thought, "This is it. This is the beginning of my motherhood body." I was twenty-five, and I had settled for fifty-five.
I went through my pre-pregnancy clothes and purged all of my size eights, all of my "going out" tops, and all of the sassy heels that would no longer fit my clumsy feet. I watched a lot of What Not to Wear to figure out how to dress this new body in a way that would conceal the curves modestly. I must not have followed their Rules very well, because I ended up dressing very matronly in clothes from the women's department. Curves were covered, but so was any hint of sex appeal, or femininity, or happiness.
It wasn't just the body. My mind was telling me that I wasn't sexy anymore, nor did I have any reason to be. Date nights with my husband switched from staying out past midnight exploring new venues in the city to going somewhere close by, checking our phones and the time for baby-related news--was it almost time to get back for nursing? Was the babysitter (grandparent) having any trouble getting the baby to sleep? Would we pay for this little disruption in baby's schedule for the next three nights? When you have a baby, no matter what parenting philosophy you align yourself with, the baby will never leave you. Not even on dates. Under such conditions, I had a hard time being fun and flirty and attractive. Also, I only felt like I was one dimension of desirable. The baby wanted me for food and comfort all day and all night. All. Night. Was I good for anything else? I didn't have time to find out. How could I reconcile the "old days," pre-pregnancy, when I could feel hot, with the new standard of living that included my baby bouncing around in my brain 24/7? It wasn't happening. I didn't realize that having a baby necessitated creating a new kind of sexy for myself. Not a quasi-sex appeal, either. A new kind of sexy.
For me, this was starting to be a desperate situation by the time my second child was born. If you spend
enough time not loving yourself, enough time pouring all of your energy into someone or something else, and spending most of your time trying to get used to the unfortunate idea that you are not and cannot be attractive anymore, it begins to be the norm that exudes
through your every day actions, words, and general mood. I was starting
to become a teacher, mother, and wife who had given up on feeling good about herself. Trust me, my students, children, and husband could tell. Neglecting myself was a lifestyle, which meant that I neglected them, too.
The first step in reinventing sexiness and virtually everything else is to figure out what can be changed and what cannot. My needed changes came in two categories: physical and emotional. If you're as impatient as I am, you also have to determine of the things that can change, which can change the fastest with the least amount of disruption to your life.
Physically, things that could not change were stretch marks, foot size, and the happy little veins that had been steadily appearing on my legs. I had to start loving those things somehow. But I could easily change the clothes I wore, my hair, and how I wore make up. It didn't have to be expensive, either. I grew my hair long and used some product to pump up the waves. I bought some new make up and experimented with wearing it in different ways. I shopped at trendy resale shops so that I could feel better financially about buying pieces that were bright and bold and sassy and wouldn't be considered "classic." Enter: fire-engine red platform pumps. Back to those in a minute.
Emotional changes were going to be less easy and quick. I was overwhelmed majorly and could barely admit it to myself. There was the voice in my head that was saying, "Help! I need time to myself every single day! Uninterrupted! I need a date night at least twice a month (every weekend preferable)! I need to hang out with my girlfriends sans children! I need freedom to get out of the house at some point each day of the weekend!" Then there was the other voice that was telling me to be sensible and mature. It was telling me that I was craving my life before children, and I just couldn't have it. I needed to get used to life with children. I suppressed my real wants because I was afraid of seeming selfish. Really afraid.
After some serious postpartum anxiety/depression and counseling after my second baby, I learned that I needed to take care of myself any way I could, which included saying out loud what I had been previously desiring in secret. My husband and I learned to start planning time for freedom as a couple and as individuals. Free time had to be carved out of our schedule because if it wasn't, then it would get totally railroaded by the daily demands of our family. After weekly social workouts with a girlfriend, I found how calm I tended to feel back at home--and that was just once per week. I was parenting much more actively, and with more patience. Surprise, surprise--when I started to feel successful with parenting, I started to feel confidence in myself. Was I...was I a strong woman?
So back to those pumps. My husband and I were out of town for a weekend alone (!) for the first time since our kids were born to attend a wedding. I had a new dress, new chunky jewelry, and a new palette of sassy eye shadows (everything from pink to yellow to teal). During an afternoon of shopping, I saw some patent-leather fiery red platform heels for $5. I figured that God had put a little bit of crazy-cheap foxy footwear in front of a woman with a new-found confidence and a thrifty spirit for a reason. I put them on. I walked down the aisles. I asked Jon his opinion (I don't know why I do this. He will never disagree with me or utter a negative word about matters regarding how I look and my menstrual cycle). I hemmed and hawed. It's not like the price was holding me back. These shoes just seemed to be for someone who knows her sex appeal and likes to flaunt it. These shoes said, "I am fierce!" They said to others on the street, "I want you to look at me." I wasn't sure if I was ready to take on these shoes. I wasn't sure I had it yet. I was a mother, after all. Moms don't wear sex on their feet.
I bought them. I didn't wear them to the wedding. My excuse was they would hurt my feet, and my feet looked too "old and vein-y" in them. No one said that new confidence and new feelings of hotness never got diluted with mom brain. I wasn't quite hot enough for the shoes in my head.
It's funny how a pair of shoes can represent so much more to a woman than just footwear. Men don't understand why someone might need to buy a shoe rack with thirty-six-pair capacity, or why it's sad when only one pair of shoes in a twenty-something's shoe collection are sexy and vivacious. Shoes represent our various moods, and we wear them accordingly. My shoes had all become glum, a smattering of muted colors to match my muted feelings about myself. There was a reason I bought the red platforms. I suspect my most heartfelt reasons were similar to why a woman might save a bikini from college--a small reminder of what was once part of her womanly identity and confidence, and also a craving to reclaim a similar confidence and identity in a new way. I bought those shoes to begin to break the barrier of self-denial that the first couple of years of motherhood built smack on top of my feminine allure. To be blatantly unoriginal, I wanted my sexy back.
I haven't worn the shoes yet. But the first step has been taken--they are on display on a new shoe rack outside of my closet, rather than buried under a mound of black, brown, and navy. I'll see them every time I pick out an outfit. One of these days, the shoes will come out and take their first walk into the real world. I'll be self-conscious, I think, but I also think that the world will be extremely kind to me. I plan on reworking the whole notion that motherhood is not sexy. Not really for other people, but for myself. Who'll join me?
Last night, Gracie began her familiar routine at the top of the stairs after she had already been put to bed. Tonight it was, "It's too dark to fall asleep!" followed by, "I'm scared!" These assertions came after she relieved her bladder, which she was "saving up" until after I said goodnight so that she had a reason to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I'm not making this up. When I put her to bed, I'll tell her, "Goodnight. I love you. Now please stay in bed--no reading, no playing. It's night-night time," to which she'll reply coyly, "Stay in bed unless I have to go potty." Then I have to resign, head downstairs, and listen for her jubilant flushing five minutes later. She'll then immerse herself in very thorough hand-washing, as if she's scrubbing in before a surgery. She's three, but she's smart.
Her methods of avoiding going to sleep have always been deliberate, clever, and well-orchestrated, even since she was a baby. She was a nightmare to sleep-train; we spent many nights listening to her scream, and on nights when we couldn't take the screaming, our "soothing" techniques looked kind of like those live statue people who make a move like once every two minutes. First pose is with the baby sleeping in the crook of the arm, then shift to awkwardly bent over the crib with the baby on the mattress still snuggled in the crook of the arm, then the sliding-away-of-the-arm maneuver with hand on the baby's belly, then slowly, slowly slide the hand away, then back away one toe at a time, and not a breath until you make it out the door. Then the door would creak, and baby would cry out in her own language, "You tried! You failed! Now get back in here, sucker!" And then it would be 30 minutes more until we made it out the door again. Once Gracie figured out our soothing routine, she actually began holding our hands against her chest when she noticed we were beginning to slip away toward the door . You want to know how to kill a mother with guilt? You teach her nine month old to grasp onto her hand, pressing it to her little belly, so that she won't leave for the evening. It was a brilliant way to buy more time with mommy, and to cause mommy to question if she really had any parenting instincts at all.
Once she was old enough to sleep in her own bed, the unrestricted nature of the twin mattress on the floor gave Gracie a new way to fight sleep. She'd wander out into the hallway where the light spilled out of the bathroom onto the carpeted floor. We'd find her sleeping in the wedge of light more often than I'd like to admit. We dutifully placed her in a pack and play in her bedroom after that for awhile so that she might sleep better. We bought her a princess night light, a fish night light, a soothing sounds machine. Then we were back to crying at bedtime (mostly her, but sometimes me too).
Nowadays, language is a valuable tool for her in her quest for sleep avoidance. She can tell me all the reasons why she cannot and should not go to sleep on time. She also can verbally justify why she hasn't surrendered to sleep, or why the light is still on at 10:30 ("I couldn't find Baby Ashley, and she was crying"). The reasoning becomes more and more elaborate and honestly reasonable. I find myself negotiating with a three year old ("I'm not that tired yet, so I'll read two books and then go to sleep," which sounds pretty good to me by the time it's an hour into the bedtime process and I'm fantasizing about the couch).
Yep, my daughter is a world-class sleep avoider. It's not malicious. In fact, when she says she's scared, I believe her. She is just like me.
I was always afraid of the dark. It takes almost nothing to trigger my imagination; I'm one of those people who believes anything is possible, no matter how irrational it seems. Monsters in the closet? Plausible. Ghosts wandering around my bedroom? Probable. I remember spending many sleepovers lying awake in unfamiliar houses, whispering to random friends and hoping that they weren't sleeping. I remember sprints into the basement to retrieve an item and back out again before I even let out my breath. I remember people in my family talking about encounters with "haints" and praying that I didn't genetically inherit the ability to have tea with some dead guy, or converse with his equally dead mother. The dark always caused my imagination to go into overdrive, usually filling me with fear of the unknown, of the paranormally possible. I don't know if the fear was exacerbated more by the fact that the darkness seemed to impede my vision, therefore reducing my security about what was near me, or more by the fact that the times I was most afraid were times when I felt alone.
When Gracie was at the top of the stairs last night, lingering in the bathroom light and saying she was scared, I had to recall those times as a child where the dark rendered me irrational. I know that in any of those times when fear paralyzed me as a child, I only wished for a person to be there to remind me of what's real and safe. On the other hand, if I've learned anything about fear over the years, it's that unless it is addressed internally and overcome personally, it will only persist the next night, or next time we don't have a full understanding of the world surrounding us. When faced with fear, we might first need someone to step in to hold us for a little while, but then we really need them to show us the tools we already possess to overcome fear. We need to know that we can control it.
I eventually figured out that I could own the dark and overcome my fear when I became a camp counselor. Camp was the ultimate test of the heeby-jeebies. First of all, as with many camps, there were dozens of ghost stories and sightings reported that I believed, of course. Besides the hauntings, there were critters and creatures and an extremely pitch-black walk back to my cabin late at night across a lonely dam and up ninety-seven stairs in the woods. My cabin had no electricity, and lots of mice. Anyway, I began an instant friendship with a mega flashlight that illuminated a fifteen foot circle around me.
My co-counselor wasn't afraid of anything, and he criticized my humongous flashlight because it attracted hoards of moths and ruined his night vision when he was trying to enjoy walks back to our cabins. He told me that my flashlight and I needed to part ways. "Doesn't that, you know, weird you out to be walking in the dark and not being able to see what's near you?" I asked him casually. He said something to the effect of, "Well, we'd be able to see if not for your T. rex of a flashlight." He convinced me to leave it in my back pack for our walks across the dam and up to our village. It turned out that he was right about the night vision thing. I could see well enough to find my way, and it was actually rather reassuring to feel like I wasn't disturbing the universe with 5 D cell batteries worth of light blaring from my hands. After weeks of walking in the blackness of night, I decided to try it solo. I won't say that my heart wasn't trying to leap out of my chest for the first few minutes, but I reminded myself that I had taken this walk many, many times before with a friend. Couldn't I, for the remainder of the walk, be the same girl I was when walking with him? I held on to the thought that I was the same person, and the world was the same, whether I was alone or not. I made it the whole way, and didn't turn on the flashlight for a walk again.
I just needed to know that I had the means to take control of what I felt was controlling me. I needed evidence, and maybe some encouragement, that I was safe regardless of the thoughts that told me otherwise. I needed to see the brave version of me. Surprisingly, she was there the whole time.
I picked Gracie up and told her how brave I know that she is. I gave her evidence from the day, such as when she conquered the giant slide at the indoor play place, or when she repeatedly worked on diving under the water for toys at the pool, even though she's just started learning to swim without floaties. She grinned, because she knew it was true. She is big, and strong, and brave. I asked her to show me her big, strong, brave Gracie face, which caused her to flex her muscles like Arnold and clinch her teeth like Donatello (the Ninja Turtle, not the sculptor). I asked her if we could have a do-over with tucking in, only this time, Brave Gracie would be there instead of Scared Gracie. She readily agreed. For the first time in awhile, if you don't count the stalling after the first tucking-in, Gracie went to sleep willingly and confidently.
I'm not saying that Gracie and I will never be scared again. Heck, I stayed up a full night last week because I saw a brown recluse in my bedroom. But I do know that we both have to expose fear and understand it for what it is: our brains trying to coax us into being comfortable with our imagined weakness. For some reason, it's easy to tell ourselves that we cannot be strong, or that being strong will mean that we'll be hurt somehow. While it's true that being brave sometimes means we're stepping outside our comfort zones, it also means that venturing out into the dark sometimes will make our comfort zones a little bit bigger, a little at a time. Tonight, Gracie might yet again be afraid to go to sleep. However, the difference between tonight and last night is that she now knows there's a brave version of herself that can go to sleep without extra lights and without grasping her mommy's hand to her chest. I hope that eventually Brave Gracie can help her through times when she's a little scared. If not, I'll be waiting in the wings with an extremely obnoxious flashlight.
I caught my husband looking at me in some mundane moment in the hallway. I had been walking in my sock feet, hair in the same style since last evening, and for some insignificant reason, I changed direction. For a split second, I turned and looked at him, and saw that his eyes had already been fixed on me. He had a soft expression on his face, a tiny smile lingering. It was an expression that I don't see often, as I am now discovering that we spend most of our time with our eyes focused on other things. But we were, for a miniscule amount of time, on a common channel, with crystal clarity. Then the common sounds of our home, the electric melody of toys, crashing of block towers, and two little dueling babblers, came washing through. I knew then that an arbitrary change of direction in an arbitrary location at an arbitrary time in the afternoon hadn't been arbitrary at all. God had scheduled a meeting with the three of us.
I walked up to my husband and said, "You looked at me happy." Not the most beautiful English, but I said what I meant in as few words as possible.
Now I would like to expand.
Several days ago, I was in the back yard mingling with some of my relatives. My eyes scanned the area; kids were splashing down the water slide as a cluster of adults looked on from outside the splash zone. A group of women were seated at a folding table underneath the canopy while a cluster of men sat in camping chairs under the maple tree. A couple of families congregated around the baby pool, laughing at the diapered kiddos splashing each other. My eyes rested on Jon. He stood at the grill in the 104 degree heat, the air shimmering above the sizzling hamburgers and hotdogs. He was wiping his forehead with the back of the hand that grasped the spatula while the other oven-mitted hand held the lid open. He had long since shed his orange collared shirt, his grey t-shirt clinging to his back. I watched him for awhile as he heaped each plate with the latest grilled delicacies to bring inside to the warmer. It was one of those agape moments--a moment where I felt some kind of not-from-me love fill me up when I looked at him. Nothing else was in my consciousness at that tiny moment, not the heat, not my guests, not even what my children were doing. It was no question that he was at the most miserable spot in the whole yard, and he was there willingly, happily. For me. Had he seen me looking at him, and had the same thought occurred to him as occurred to me when we made eye contact in the hallway, he might have said, "You looked at me happy."
I find myself looking at my husband in that agape way more often than rarely, but sadly, less often than usually. It's true that we spend most of our time throughout the day with our eyes on other things (usually our kids, or the house, or our computers, or the TV). To each other, we are "every day." We are part of each other's background. We are part of each other's daily existence. We have not lost value to each other; we have simply become so much a part of each other's lives that our view of the world doesn't change much when one of us crosses the other's path. It's like standing on a rock for so long that you stop consciously thinking that the rock is the whole reason you are closer to the sky. It becomes difficult to separate out the little moments throughout the day that are expressions of that agape love--that love that came from somewhere else beyond understanding. However, when these agape moments do occur, no matter how slight, I remember how amazing, how truly miraculous it is that we even were brought together.
Then I start to feel small. Then I start to wonder how in the world I managed to end up with a man of such integrity,
drive, responsibility, and work ethic. There are plenty of people in
this world who end up devoting at least some parts, if not all of their
lives to people who deflate their souls. As I have stated before, I am
not in the least bit more deserving than anyone else of any grace from
God. I am often struck by the fact that a series of personal choices
create a delicate web that connects one person to another. If I hadn't
have chosen
to attend my high school, I never would have had the need to join a
carpool; if I hadn't joined a carpool, I never would have befriended my
husband, etc etc etc. That's the thing about free will: one small
change in choice can completely, infinitely change the whole pattern of
the web, and the people involved in it. I have to admit that I'm
tempted by the apparent randomness of it all, which makes my thoughts
about my marriage a little more irrational. It's weird, but I try to
make sense of how
purposeful our lives' intertwining was/is, because if our joining was
for a reason, orchestrated by a benevolent God, then surely he won't be
taken away from me for no reason.
Right?
Okay, I know that's not right. I guess I have a little guilt related to the possibility that one day time will be up.
Guilt because there are many, many times that I don't recognize my
husband for the irreplaceable gift that he is. When I do stop to think
about it, I don't even tell him that he has fulfilled me more than I
know how to explain or rationalize. What's even worse is that I know I
must cause him to suffer insecurity from time to time, insecurity that
he can't somehow keep me happy at times when I seem anxious, stressed,
or depressed, or at times when I choose to spend my evening blogging
instead of talking to him, despite the inordinate amount of effort he
puts into our children and the managing of our finances and household. His role in our house and our family is nothing less than charitable and foundational. He has devoted his life to serving us. But it only occurs to me sometimes to stop, take a breath, and look at him happy. I only sometimes acknowledge the rock on which I am standing.
As I've been writing in this blog, I've discovered that while I've explored many topics and facets of my life that intrigue me, I haven't brought in the one element of my life that helps me feel a love that is outside of myself. I haven't illuminated the part of my every day that makes me touch fingertips with God occasionally when I look at him. I want to acknowledge my husband now, not as a gratuitous, cheesy tribute, but to fill the space between agape moments when he might wonder where we stand with each other as we watch TV quietly, side by side. Let it be known, you, that my every day is spent in awe of the fact that somehow, despite our own individual choices and flaws, we are delicately, but unbreakably joined. And for that, I am (constantly) happy.
Peering out the window this morning as I sipped my coffee, I noticed that an 8-10 foot long, hefty dead branch had snapped off of a tree in the back yard and had come to rest on the power line that extends between our house and the pole. The power line hadn't come down, thank goodness, but the branch was suspended precariously between the tree trunk and the line. "That's...lucky," I mused out loud, considering that we had just had a back yard full of family members only two days ago. I decided that was a crisis narrowly evaded.
That tree, it turns out, was a beloved staple of my back yard, which was my grandparents' back yard when my older cousins were growing up. As I was schmoozing with relatives at our soiree, my cousin asked me, "How's the tree?" Glancing around at the five prominent trees nearby, I followed his gaze to the stout maple standing in the middle of the yard. He marveled at its growth since he last saw it years ago, reflecting that it was a piece of living history; his sneakers had scudded up the trunk on many, many journeys into the sturdy branches as a kid. As he studied the tree, he asked about the maintenance of it--was it hard to take care of? Me, being about as opposite from a arboriculturist as I can be, murmured something about having to cut off a few dead branches here and there, but nothing special. It was a tree long-established in the yard...doesn't it kind of take care of itself? My cousin wasn't really looking at it from an arboricultural perspective, either. But, he recognized the tree, and his connection to it, as fragile, despite it's relative strength and age. He was thankful, I think, that this fleck of memory was still standing, in all its glory, in the yard in which he had experienced ultimate childhood joy. It was then that I began to realize the ultimate responsibility that I now have, as the owner of my grandparents' house. I am the maintainer of memory.
When I moved into this house two years ago, I had already begun piecing together a mental quilt of memories, gathered from my various childhood experiences in rooms throughout the house--here is the fourth-stair-from-the-top that always squeaked when Grandma came up for bed, telling me that all was safe and she was only across the hall from me through the remainder of the night. Here is the desk where Grandpa taught me how to balance a checkbook at the age of eight. Here is the counter where Grandma opened the horse-shaped cookie jar for a little snack after lunch. Here is the den where Grandma prayed her daily rosary (and where many matches in Pong took place on the Atari). The history of the house, as I had experienced it, pieced together nicely in my first couple years of living here.
Throughout the reunion weekend, I collected bits and pieces of information about the memory and history that my house holds. Conversations with cousins, aunts, and uncles offered some more layers to my understanding of collective memory, and showed the fragility of a family, just like the old maple. Here is the yard that was home to wiffle ball games in the summer humidity. Here is the spot under the staircase where my uncles would secretly talk to their girlfriends on the phone, the phone number for a certain "Paula" etched into the bottom of the painted stairs. Here is the bedroom window the boys would tap on so my aunt would let them in the house after curfew. Here is the living room where a heated argument peaked with my grandfather being shoved across the space by his angry son, signaling the beginning of a lifelong chasm between father and son, dreams and reality, moral dignity and violent temper. Here is where the two recliners stood, side by side, my grandmother sitting quietly, pensively in hers while the other remained empty for two years before she finally returned home, as well. I watched my family members wander through the house, their personal memories adding color and music to the walls, emotions sinking into the wooden floors and drywall. I sensed the connection each person had with this space, and the eventual bittersweet separation they all experienced as we closed the old storm door behind the last guest.
This space is mine now, but in a way, is not totally mine. The floors that I sweep (occasionally) have only belonged to generations of my family since the house has been built. Before my own children's toddler toes were the tiny feet of my cousins and me before that, and my father and his siblings before that. I try to remember, on behalf of my family, all that took place here. I try to honor those memories by taking care of the house, from the fourth-from-the-top squeaky stair to the decaying branches of the maple tree. I wouldn't say the house is always in tip-top shape, and I sometimes feel self-conscious, like my grandmother is looking down at the mess with eyebrows raised. I try, though. It takes frequent calculated efforts, especially in the case of this weekend, when we tried to prepare our house (despite the opposing efforts of my children) for thirty-eight people to have dinner here.
Many of my relatives made a point to tell me that the house looks great. Of course, after weeks of cleaning, painting, and organizing, it felt gratifying to hear it. But I think my greatest satisfaction was watching the house fill up my family, as my family filled up the house, the basement, the yard. I saw my cousins fall in love with the house, and my grandmother especially, all over again simply by stepping inside, or looking at the trees. I felt fulfilled watching generations of my family re-establishing connections with each other in a place, and because of a place, that is everyone's common denominator--a place that I am able to love and cultivate every day. I know this house is at the most basic level a structure of planks and floorboards, screws and nails. But at its highest potential, this house is a sacred space, a prayer of thanksgiving for over fifty years of a family's commitment to each other, and a source of fulfillment for those who come inside.
It's possible that some day this house will no longer belong to my family. It's possible that all that has happened here will have to be preserved in our hearts and minds, rather than a physical interaction between family and home. Until this house is no longer in my possession, I promise to continue developing what was started here long before I was born. I'll try my best to preserve my family's memories so that they may access them more clearly each time they visit. I'll take advantage of the love that envelops me daily as I live out my life here. I will maintain the house as it has maintained all of us, day by day, gathering by gathering. I'll carry this part of my family's history like an Olympic torch and trust that our history here will feed and fulfill all future families inside these walls. It's my responsibility, and it's a gift.
