I’m obsessed with craftsman style homes. I love everything about them. I love their old features. Their oft-explored nooks and crannies. The way they squeak at just the right moments. Their built-in shelves and cabinets that have held treasure after treasure. The crown molding that just makes the room. But I think what I love most about them is their porches. The wrap around porch that just exudes sweet, summer evenings with a tall Arnold palmer in hand. The ice that quietly shifts as the warmth from my hand and from my lips slowly melt it. The slow rocking back and forth in rocking chair that’s been passed down generation to generation. The creaking of the chair that sounds a little bit like a baby’s soft cry as they fall asleep in loving arms. I can feel the breeze gently tousle my hair as it wraps its way around my porch. I see my children running through the sprinklers, joyously playing together. I see all of it. I feel it. I love it. I want it. I want to walk through the beautiful antique door into my perfectly decorated craftsman and feel home.
Instead, I walk through a security screen that has a big chunk missing from it from when we locked ourselves out after camping and then only thing we had outside was a leatherman. I walk through my obtrusively gated door into a house that is filled to the brim with ikea furniture, not unique at all, but instead, much more practical. A house that has no closet doors, no built-in’s and no crown molding. A house that I’ve been able to lovingly coax a few veggies out of the ground, but I can’t get the grass to grow or the bouganvilla to stop growing. A house that has a cat that insists on attacking us in the bathroom with her need for attention. A house that has counter tops a bit to tall for the little one toddling around the house to see over, making him constantly wanting to be in our arms as we cook. A house that, as I lay my head down on the pillow under it’s roof at the end of a long day, seems like it has an ever-growing to-do list.
I’ve always wondered what takes just a house, 4 walls and a floor and roof, and makes it a home? Is it the furniture? The perfectly coordinating paint colors? Is it the open floor plan, or the galley-style kitchen? Today, I heard a great speaker quote someone saying, “Courage is a door that only opens from the inside”. I immediately thought about my house. I’m not sure why. I think maybe because taking a courageous risk, has to come from a place of safety. I know it seems like a paradox, but I think in order to really open the door to risk, we have to understand what it means to be safe. We have to look safety in the eye, and say, “I see you. I know you’re here. I know I can come back to you. Right now though, I need to open the door.”
I thought about how my front door opens from the inside. Each morning as we pack our computer bags, our lunches, our diaper bags, and schlep them out to the car, often forgetting something and running back in, I give a quick cursory glance around my house. I see the new rug that’s given my son a comfortable place to kneel and play. I see the new windows as the light of the morning streams through them so brightly it illuminates the whole house. I see that same cat, enjoying both the rug and the windows as she lazy swings her tail back and forth in the warmth of a sunbeam. I don’t see the imperfections of my house. I see my home.
And as I schlep all that stuff back in the house at the end of every evening, I breathe a small sigh of relief. I bring it the mail, a tired but happy baby, empty snapware from an eaten lunch, and a computer that probably got a bit too much use during the day. And that home is ready to receive me, baggage and all. It’s ready to have feet trodden all over it, and water spilled on it’s floors and more than likely a few chunks of dinner on it’s walls….and maybe it’s ceiling.
I think we’re the ones that make the home. We’re the ones that give the walls life, not that perfect Pantone pallet of colors. Us. You. Me. Together. As we have courage to open the door every day, to a new world pregnant with possibility, and retreat to the places that give us safety and stability. So as I lay my head down tonight, beneath a roof that could probably use a few spot fixes here and there, I know I’m safe. And tomorrow, I know I’ll be frantically rushing out the door, a little too late, but a little more courageous.