THE ATTIC

Our anniversary was Monday. 

We celebrated the last 13 years the Friday before, just the two of us. With the kids at their grandparents' house, we opted for a casual dinner downtown. Conversation ran uninterrupted by toddler giggles and endless requests. We tuned in to each other without distractions of school day stories and preteen social dynamics. We saw each other as husband and wife instead of Daddy and Mama, a difference often overlooked but one always worth remembering.

When you've been with someone as long as we've been with each other, 21 years, there's a lot of ground to cover. When you've seen someone through every phase of life starting with their teenage years, there's a lot to unpack. When there's so much history, so many ups and downs, so many laughs, so many tears, it's easy to tuck them all away as memories and just look forward to tomorrow. When you've said all there is to say, sometimes it's easier not to make withdrawals from the memory bank.

Good thing we're both stubborn.

We spent Monday night, our actual anniversary, celebrating with the kids. A day like every other where we gather around the table for dinner in our unassigned, assigned seats. The meal was filling and the toddler giggles were contagious. The conversation leaned toward recess and YouTube celebrities while Allison and I played hide-and-seek with the wife and husband behind the mother and father. We snuck a few glances, shared a few smiles, and soaked in our children - the love between us personified.

We cleaned up the kitchen, ushered the kids upstairs for their bedtime routines, and listened as they said their prayers. We slowly pulled their doors closed, blowing kisses through the narrowing crack, then we snuck back downstairs to uncork a bottle of champagne. I secretly bought a bottle earlier completely unaware that Allison was doing the same. We grabbed our glasses and quietly climbed the stairs to visit one of our favorite places.

The attic.

It was our first Valentine's Day in the new house when we created a little hangout in the attic. Innocent enough, it was just to get away from our offspring for a few minutes, a last-minute romantic gesture in a season of diapers and lectures. A moment of quiet from the constant commotion of day-to-day life where we could see each other and hear each other. We never dismantled it and, instead, come back to it often.

A few old beach chairs folded out with an even older chest between them. Leftover carpet left behind from the owners before partially rolled out for warmth underneath us, for Charlie mainly. A few strands of string lights, with burned-out bulbs that somehow survived the move, are strung loosely along the studs and the railing. A street sign bearing the name of a backroad between our childhood homes that we drove countless times on the way to see each other, racing to beat the clock from an impending curfew.

It's ours.

We raised our glasses and toasted, to what we had and what we have, what we've been through and what we're building, and we sipped while surrounded by boxes of seasonal decorations and random items the kids have outgrown. The attic, our grown-up version of a treehouse, is where we go to reconnect. It's a routine that developed unintentionally, but one we both look forward to.

It sounds odd, sure, but it's where we're able to see each other without any outside influence shading our view. It's where the conversation never runs dry even when the champagne bottles do. We give each other downloads of our day, we talk about our kids, we discuss our dreams, we note the goals we've checked off the list and those still ahead. We talk about this and that and everything in between.

We talk.

Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for minutes. Sometimes not at all. We turn on a playlist in the background and sing along or listen to the rain on the roof as the thunder vibrates the walls. We laugh. We cry. Sometimes we laugh until we cry. We revisit those kids 21 years ago who thought they knew everything but had no idea. We acknowledge their mistakes. We celebrate their wins. We show them love and grace and understanding and thank God we had each other every step of the way.

Monday night, we climbed the stairs with champagne flutes in hand and drank to the commitment we made to each other 13 years ago. Still young. Still believing we knew everything but still had no idea. We relived our wedding and our honeymoon, noting every detail we would change and those we wouldn't touch at all. We'll climb those stairs again, probably tonight, probably tomorrow night. God-willing, we'll climb them again another 13 years from now, surrounded by a life's worth of souvenirs, to revisit who we are today.

Cheers to that.

THE ATTIC

November 12, 2021

HOME

 

A year ago... we weren't looking, but we weren't not looking either. At least that's what we told ourselves as we stalked real estate listings in our area over the course of five years (give or take). We knew what we didn't want, but more importantly, we knew exactly what we did want. With two kids and a golden retriever in tow, we wanted our next move to be our last move.

We wanted our forever home.

After narrowing down a few neighborhoods, we were on high alert for any houses that popped up. We're obnoxiously picky when it comes to spending money. Call it penny-pinching or cheap or tight or whatever you want, but we know what we like and, more often than not, we're not willing to settle - especially when it comes to big-ticket purchases like a house.

Then it appeared. A near-perfect listing.

We were nervous. We crunched numbers. We moved cautiously, slowly, too slowly, and it got away. Back to waiting we went. We were fine with it. Bruised egos and hurting hearts, sure, but still fine to wait. The first house we purchased a decade ago, as a young married couple, was suiting our needs. It was the house we brought both of our children home to. They crawled then walked on those floors. They said their first words within those walls. Bittersweetly, as children do, they were growing up and we were sadly outgrowing the space.

So, we prayed.

We prayed and we saved and we paid down the last of our debt from our frivolous spending in our 20's. (Lessons learned. No regrets.) We waited patiently. We waited through hard-earned promotions and career pivots, highs and lows, then a pandemic hit. Our waiting suddenly turned towards defeat and we almost gave up the hope that our dream home existed. We almost gave up the hope that the house we were waiting for was somewhere waiting for us, too.

Almost.

However, God has a plan, as He always does. Our white flag was us letting go but little did we know it would be exactly what He was waiting for us to do - to surrender. We continued to pray. Although our house prayers were slipped in towards the end of bedtime as an additional PS before falling asleep or sandwiched between immense gratitude for making it through another day of uncharted times in a COVID-world.

Then it appeared. The perfect listing.

It was a Saturday, a day reserved for household chores and family time not for looking at recent real estate listings. That task was designated for weekday mornings over coffee, but there we were... looking but not looking. And there it was staring back at us. Screens can be deceiving, so we immediately reached out to our realtor for a showing first thing Monday morning. We counted the minutes, our blessings, and our finances for the next few days until we pulled into the driveway.

God's presence. Crippling fear. Sometimes they accompany each other.

The floorplan was everything we wanted. Open but with subtly defined spaces. So, I built walls. The layout was perfect for our family. A natural flow with plenty of space to spread out but would always lead us back to one another. So, I closed it all in. There were a few changes needed to make it feel like us. A fresh coat of paint to highlight all the stunning moldings throughout among other updates. So, I said it was a deal-breaker. The house was impeccably built and maintained, so I mentally tore it apart.

I was scared and nervous. I self-sabotaged, as I tend to do, and we walked away.

Over the next several days, I stalked the listing completely unaware that my wife was doing the same. We couldn't get the house out of our heads. It checked every box on every list we ever made. Plus, it added new boxes that we weren't even looking for but couldn't stop thinking about and checked them off too. We toyed with the option of building our own and toured a few new builds in various stages of progress, but in the end, what we wanted was already built. We both knew it.

I learned that in order for dreams to come true, you have to wake up.

We reached out to our realtor again for a second showing. With the patience of a saint, she let us in to walk through the house another time. This time, though, we envisioned our kids running through the halls leaving waves of laughter to wash the walls in their wake. We pictured birthdays and holidays celebrated in the dining room. We saw ourselves picking glitter and confetti from the cracks of the floorboards decades from now wondering how long they'd been there. We saw this house as our home and once we allowed ourselves to feel it, we couldn't imagine it any other way.

An offer was made on the spot. We attached a letter I wrote and crossed our fingers.

And just like that, we were back to waiting... and praying. From that point forward, we were strapped in for a ride that we couldn't seem to get off of. Things happened quickly. There was a mix of white-knuckling and throwing our hands up, but the ride moved on regardless. There was some back and forth, competition in a ruthless market, and we attempted to prepare ourselves to let it go if we had to. Then our offer was accepted. Our current house was listed, a buyer submitted an offer we couldn't refuse as soon as it hit the market, and we rolled with it. Strapped in. Both hands up.

I guess what is meant to be really will be.

It's hard to explain how important a house is when you're a homebody by nature. To most, it's just a dwelling. Four walls to close you in, a roof to store your things under, and a place to rest your head at night. I can understand that. For me, though, it's much more. It's where I let my guard down after a guarded day. It's where I recharge as an introvert in an extroverted world. It's where my wife and I are chasing and tackling one life goal at a time, where we're growing old together as we've grown up together. It's where the joy in this season of life is bottled, where my kids face their fears without judgment. It's where they'll establish a part of themselves that they'll always return to even when they're adults, even if it's only through recalled memories.

It's home. And there's no other place like it.

HOME

October 29, 2021

THEIR HOUSE

The hearts, tied together by a single string, still hang from their door with a painted message welcoming me into their house, the house that easily represents my home away from home, a visual reminder of my childhood and proof that grandparents are the most amazing people a child is lucky enough to know. I still feel their presence when I step foot across the threshold of the home they inhabited together. The smell of nostalgia is thick as the dust that has accumulated on the belongings they’ve left behind, a museum of a life they shared with three children of their own that still continues a journey through their children, through me, through our children and one day through their children.

A dining table sits holding memories in place of the plates we ate from every Thanksgiving crammed elbow to elbow, cousin next to uncle next to brother next to niece, we sat and laughed and unintentionally took for granted the time we had together. Now within the walls that watched meal after meal throughout a lifetime hold those same smiles paused between the four edges of frames, pictures of moments frozen, illustrating a time when we were all physically present to pass Grandma’s homemade biscuits and her cucumbers soaked in a pool of vinegar and pepper.

Year after year we shared a space, their space, with the same people we share a last name with… at Easter and birthdays and random occasions in between and when the year threatened anew we gathered ourselves in the living room at the front of their house reserved for Christmas and the decorations and the lit tree that accompanies the celebration. Some sat in chairs, most sat on the floor (my chosen spot as the youngest and, at the time, the smallest member of the family) while they took their places on the cushions of a couch that felt the warmth of very few others and hardly ever on another day than the 25th of December. We exchanged gifts and gratitude and glances full of unspoken feelings that went without saying but now linger like the aftertaste of bitter words one is forced to swallow when all they want is the opportunity to let them out. 

After they passed, numerous questions arose with what to do with their belongings. The dishes and pots and pans she spent so much time with preparing food to fill our bellies on a stove where the behavior of the burners was memorized and the knobs were far more temperamental than accurate. The candy in mason jars and bags left open on a table beside the chair he often occupied in front of a television sharing thoughts of Perry Mason by day and the hopeful guesses of wheel spinning contestants by night. The stool in the den I jumped off with a tattered housecoat tied around my neck like the cape of Batman before my age became double digits. The endless collections of two people who built a life in the same home where they built a family and extended an open invitation for us all to enter whenever we wanted, they were the backbone of a familial body with far more limbs than they could have predicted yet they formed a relationship with every single one of us. 

They tied our hearts together by the strength of a surname and left us hanging on the door of a home full of love they left behind. Those hearts, tied together by a single string, that still hang from their door with a painted message welcoming us into their home and into their lives proving that grandparents really are the most amazing people a child is lucky enough to know.

THEIR HOUSE

April 14, 2014