We are renovating our little house to serve us better as we don't want to leave it. This enterprise started about a month late and Keith and the kids have spent the last 3 weeks hiding out at my parents to avoid the mess.
The upstairs bathroom is gutted and the new plumbing has started. The kitchen has lost it's floor and it's ceiling and half the cabinets are down (to allow for the plumbing changes). The backyard lost the old birch tree and the pine got a significant trim. Things are coming along but we are definitely still in the demolition phase.
And on Friday Keith and the kids came home. Our house, while they were gone, felt like an empty shell of itself. Like the life had been sucked out of it. Eventually this old house and I settled into our quiet routine over the 3 weeks - mostly it was on its own and I worked. We probably both missed the cacaphony of yelling and running. Now the noise is back in full swing but the heart of our house is under repair and it shows. We have gravel, drywall and dust in the kitchen - it feels like our house is getting open-heart surgery and the ribcage is trying to hold it together in the interim.
How lucky we are to love this house so much. To read stories in secret campouts in the closets. To make new kitchen homes in the storage room. To shuffle out the old useless chimney and breath new life into its main spaces. How many memories we've made here and how many more we hope to make. My family has come home to run around in the hallowed arteries of a new beginning - in what's familiar laced with the possibility of new life, moving forward and supported by what's past.
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