Choice and contentment

Sigh.

You know when everything in life is going at a mad pace--frenetic, confused, a bit disconnected, but nevertheless productive--and then you make a decision? You turn your life from one direction down another, and the first thing you notice is it's more quiet there? You're walking down this new path and you start to notice things, like it's breezy and there's room to sit on a mossy rock and observe the ants. It's a sort of drawing in, a simplification.

That's what this week has been like. After weeks of indecision, this Monday morning we called our agent and took our house off the market, and we're refinancing into another 30-year fixed at a lower rate. Cora and I drove up to our place this morning and the sign was gone. I heaved a sigh of relief. I felt so grateful. It was actually, if you can believe it, like buying our house all over again. Only this time after what feels like years of searching we found a house pre-packaged with memories of our first nights sleeping here, of months of landscaping the yard, refinishing the basement, painting every wall ourselves while eating take-out from restaurants in our new neighborhood, re-grouting the bathroom floor, conceiving a child, working from home, sewing curtains while 8-months pregnant, going into labor, bringing Cora home from the hospital and introducing her to each room....

(I'm getting choked up remembering it...yep, my eyes are swimming with that memory. Tiny 5 pound 8 ounce Cora wrapped up in our arms, little newborn eyes opening briefly to look at our kitchen, at the living room, at the bedroom we had taken such pains to decorate for her, while our hearts brimmed over because we were able to tell our daughter that this was her house, her cupboards of food, her clothes, her little bed. It wasn't the fact of the house, it was the fact that she was here, that we could explain to her that she would be alright, that we were going to do everything in our power for the rest of our lives to take care of her. The kitchen, the house painstakingly cleaned by her aunties, and all the bouquets of flowers from friends and family heralded the start of her life.)

I feel a great deal of relief to be able to say that right now I don't want to live on an island and I don't want to move out of my house--not yet anyway. We want to continue making improvements, finishing other spaces in the basement, and enjoying our cozy Northeast Seattle neighborhood. Even if it means sitting here in a depreciating market, or realizing that someday, indeed, our desire for more space (indoor and outdoor) will become bigger than our little house, still, we're fine right now. The present is more apparent to me right now than the future, and the past feels like it's rolled out behind me with an odd feeling of pattern and plan.

I am reminded, too, of how I made the decision to quit my job last year. It took signing the offer letter and spending the weekend in that new life to realize it wasn't the life I wanted. Maybe I'm just one of those people. I need to live some of it a little bit to know if it's for me. Maybe I needed to give our house away to everyone who walked in the door before I realized I didn't want to.

And also, of course, it is nice to live in a house that is relatively ordered, clean, slightly more updated, exactly how I thought someone else would want a charming old 1942 house to be.

And so I have to pause for a moment and consider, full circle, the story here. Gratitude for what you have. Not because you have to work hard to be grateful, but because it fits, and it works, and it is nice. Quiet. Contented. Sitting still and honing in on other things, like thoughts and friends and family, and weeding the yard and going on local outings. Taking care of the details that get shoved away when everything else is made distracting by the desire to be somewhere else, doing something else. Digging in. It fits with winter and as we enter these colder days, I am happy to settle in to our warm and happy home.