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.

Five Years

Brian and I celebrated our wedding anniversary over Memorial Day weekend at a sweet Camano Island cottage overlooking the mountains and water and a rugged beach. We sat in the sun, went swimming, played on the sand with Cora, and held hands a lot.

I sometimes pause to wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't met Brian 13 years ago, and married him five years ago. He has been an anchor in my life for that long, in one respect or another, and my sense of self has become permanently entangled with his existence. First and foremost, his is my best friend. But he has a million qualities that guarantee I will be perpetually hooked. He is handsome and funny and loving and emotional and smart and moody and artistic and thoughtful and adventurous and homey and he has sexy hands and he's an amazing father and he makes me feel better when I'm in a bad mood and he doesn't spend Sunday watching football, and he loves the ocean, and...he's mine.

This weekend I looked at him and wanted, as I have wanted since I met him, to paralyze the moment. I'd like to have it in my hands, a tangible thing, so I can look at the grey in his hair and the way he holds our daughter. I want to be able to watch his feet walk in flip-flops on the beach. I want to always see him standing with his eyes closed, gathering sun between his brows. If I could freeze the moment and file it away, and if I could share it, I would have a bestseller book of loveliness. People from all around the world would rush to get their share of Brian.

There are some moments that have shaped me so intrinsically I am not sure who I would be otherwise. I have pulled out these memories so often they have become polished and genetic, are probably housed somewhere in Cora's DNA, however personal they are to me.

I was 18 years old and I wrote in my journal that I was ready to fall in love. I wanted a real boyfriend, but in order to fall in love with him he would need to be a very specific kind of person. I wrote down all the qualities about this imaginary guy. I thought about him to the point that I became surprised I couldn't just conjure him out of thin air. A few weeks later, I read my horoscope and it said the upcoming Saturday was auspicious. It is possible, it said, that I would meet the love of my life. (Horoscopes had a special draw to me back then. I was addicted. I could read a a prediction and swoon with happiness, or else suffer an attack of worry.)

That next weekend, I and my five roommates hosted a party in our Seattle house. We asked some talented friends to play '50s Elvis tunes, got my of-age sister to buy a big keg of beer, and invited a few people. Word must have spread that something fun was happening in the heart of a dark Seattle winter, because soon our house filled to capacity and then some, as 200-300 party animals in saggy pants and Seattle flannel shuffled through the house and started moshing in our living room. Brian entered the house and he looked like he was glowing, like a saint among common folk. I knew him slightly, had been in an art history class with him, and had talked on the phone a bit after I'd seen him at a party. But he seemed so shy, and stiff, and organized, certainly not the kind of free-spirited fellow I was used to dating. But that night he looked like a prophet of some kind, a glowing boy, and if it was only because he had the benefit of recently returning from San Diego and actually having a bit of a tan amongst our pale compatriots, I didn't think about it then. We danced and talked and leaned in because the music was loud and all those people were shuffling around us. When we kissed, I remember feeling a lifetime flash through me, a fraction of a second in which I could picture marrying him, holding his hand, rocking in old chairs on our front porch when we were old and gray.

We dated for nearly two years in college. It was like this: neither of us had cars, so dates were long walks to the lake, kissing by a river, picnicking at the beach, taking the bus, going for long runs, hiding away in the library with our textbooks and writing notes on each other's paper, finding small shores by waterfront parks and digging our heels into the sand. Whenever we went out of town, it was to go hiking or camping or on a ferry across the Sound. When we fought, it was emotional and wrenching and deeply dramatic, and eighteen.

Whenever he went away during winter or summer breaks, he would send me letters on giant sketchpad paper.

I was in Italy. We were no longer together, and I was nearly 22. (He went to Pasadena for school, we separated for two years.) He still sent me letters on giant sketchpad paper. I was wandering the streets of Rome and stopped at a magazine stand in the Campo dei Fiori. His art school was being profiled in the L'uomo (men's) Vogue. They chose a few of the art students there to participate in the photo shoot. He had said, check out the L'uomo Vogue, but he didn't prepare me for pictures of him laughing in a dapper suit. I turned each page to see his face while behind me vegetable vendors shouted about the price of tomatoes and beans.

A month later, he sent me a tape recording of Charles Aznavour, and an email that told me to imagine I was a princess in an enchanted kingdom and the world would roll at my feet. I was depressed and lonely, tired of Rome, and I headed out for a long walk. I turned on the music and listened to Aznavour's beautiful voice of butter and smoke sing "She." I can still remember that feeling of my heart high in my chest, my head down, as I walked to the Tiber and rewound and replayed these lyrics over and over and over..."She may be the first I can't forget, a trace of pleasure or regret...Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears, and make them all my souvenirs, for where she goes I've got to be, the meaning of my life is she..."

Later that year, I was back in Seattle and I returned from a run to find a letter from him. It was the closest thing to a marriage proposal I had ever received. The next day, I ran my first half-marathon and thought about that letter and about him--a boy I had felt fateful about since the moment he walked into my living room on February 10, 1996. A month later, I flew down to Pasadena and we drove up the coast back to Seattle, winding along the 101 and burrowing ourselves permanently into each other's futures.

We've been back together ever since--in the past nine years we've graduated three times (undergrad for me and Brian, graduate for me), married, lived in three cities, visited as many beaches as we could manage, made new friends, set up a house, worked at a number of challenging jobs, talked and talked and talked, and had a baby. As I write this, I remember countless times in the passenger seat with my feet on the dashboard and the window rolled down, laughing. Sometimes that's how I feel about our lives together: I know we'll keep heading in the right direction. Sometimes I have to remember it's okay to relax and enjoy the ride.

There is a list of all the little things that I could itemize, moment by moment, if anyone cared to listen. If given enough time, I could pull up all the frames that explain why I have lately started to really realize that there is a great beauty in simply being able to love and be loved. There is a wakefulness, an awareness of fragility, and a constantly renewing stream of gratitude.