Lemony Steam and Home Thoughts

There is something about ironing that takes me back to the days when we had first moved into this house. Really beyond memory, more an inhabiting of those first weeks here, every time I unfold my screechy board and set to work with spray and starch and steam.

The kitchen around me looked very different then. Dull and dark wood cabinets, brown carpet on the floor, and primed walls, it looked kind of like a whitewashed cave. But nothing made me feel so much at peace in our new home as being there, looking out the window, smoothing wrinkles and crisped creases.

There were more questions than answers, then as now. Then, I contemplated some relationships and wondered if they would survive our transitions of career path and geography. Some didn't. I dreamed over our new home and imagined the loving changes I wanted for it. As always with a family with small children, the pace of those changes has been slow, as we have resolved to be careful about laying aside too much living for the sake of improving. I reflected as I pressed business shirts for my husband on his love for his new job, and felt a profound gratitude that long-deserved professional success and satisfaction was finally his.

The kitchen looks different now. The room of the house where we have laid the heaviest hand has pale green walls, creamy cabinets, and the door and drawer pulls I set my heart on. I walk a cream and charcoal ceramic checkerboard floor laid by my husband. I wonder about different things, like our new church home, Joshua's school friends, Sam's last year full-time with me and what books I should use to tempt their vibrant minds.

But deeper than any conscious thought is this settled feeling of peace, that has been with me since the first morning I stumbled into this kitchen to make coffee. Like a quiet whisper-- here we are, we live here. These walls contain our truest selves, we make a good place for each other, a soft place to land at the end of the day.