Our Little Cottage

This past Monday my husband reminded me that we have now been here in our little house, our "casita," for two years. Happy anniversary, wee, little home! Wow, has time flown. It seems we were just moving in.

I'll be honest, I didn't really want to move over here... at first. We had spent twenty-six wonderful years in our Abiso house. We had brought our youngest home from the hospital there. We had homeschooled our four children there. We had celebrated milestones there... sweet sixteens, driver's licenses, graduations. It was within those walls that we also mourned the loss of our parents and saw our children off to college. There were so. many. memories.

There.

That house was a part of me, and when I left, it felt like leaving some of myself behind.

In retrospect, I feel almost ashamed at what that did to my poor husband. He was the driving force behind the concept of our downsizing. My carrying on, and in this I do not exaggerate... I literally hugged every wall before I left for the last time, blubbering like a baby... made him feel terrible, as if he'd forced me into something horrendous that would leave me scarred for the rest of my life.

Of course, he had not forced me into anything. WE had had many discussions about the idea, and WE had reached the conclusion together that this was the best course of action for US both.

That being said, it took me a while to warm up to this new place, and I think I know why, what it was that was "missing." Although this house had been home not only to my parents, but also to my son and daughter-in-law at one time, and was full of all kinds of special memories that we ourselves had taken part in over the years... none of the memories were really ours. We had not been the ones to create them, to "bank" them.

This little space was a blank page for us, and it wouldn't be until we started making some memories here ourselves that it would really begin to feel like home.

It's kind of funny, isn't it, to think of a house being nothing more than a tool, per say, but that's really all it is. Albeit a tremendous blessing, the walls, floor, and roof are only that until we begin "banking" those precious moments, until we start using that tool to build a home.

Houses come and go. They get remodeled. They get replaced with something altogether bigger and better (which I hope never happens to the old place as it would, indeed, send me into deep throngs of despair.) Homes, on the other hand, never leave us. They are a part of us as much as our limbs. They are deep-rooted in both our memories and our hearts, and it's because something magical happens in a good home. People are valued there. They are cared for and ministered to there. They are hugged and tickled and tucked into bed there. They are nourished with hearty food for both body and soul there. They cry there. They laugh there. They make mistakes there, and they are forgiven there.

That is what I want for this little cottage of ours. It may be small, but I want it to pulse with a big heart. I want it to be the kind of home where everyone from family and friends to strangers feel welcomed here. After two years, it's beginning to feel like that for me. It's starting to be as comfortable here as a favorite old sweater wrapped around my shoulders.

This house is not pretentious. How could it be? By all definitions, it IS a cottage. Mary Emmerling's book: American Country Cottages describes a cottage as "compact and cozy... scaled to human needs and the honest value associated with country life among good friends and family." She goes on to say, "The real magic of cottage living lies in its simplicity and romance. Most of us formed our earliest impressions of cottages from fairy tales."

Well, I don't know about country life or fairy tales, but I think the rest of her definition is spot-on, and definitely something to aim for... compact and cozy, honest value, friends and family, simplicity and romance. Yep. My idea exactly!

Making a home has less to do with tending to the furniture and drapes and more -so much more- to do with tending to the precious individuals who live there.

Now that we've been here for a couple of seasons, we've begun to make our own deposits into the memory bank of this place. We have hosted family, ALL of them at the same time, utilizing the pull-out couch, port-a-crib, and every available sleeping pad and air mattress at our disposal. We have had friends over for tea and dinner. We have made good use of our back deck and picnic tables to host gatherings, and we have circled around our version of a fire pit ("fire -in- a- bucket") more times that I can count.

It feels good. It feels right. It feels like home.

This past weekend Tom and I were sitting out around the aforementioned fire pit (ahem) enjoying the crisp evening. He had to go back into the house for something, which is really of no consequence to this story, but as I sat there quietly, feeling the warmth of the flames on my face, I remembered. I remembered all of us sitting around that same fire, talking into the night last Christmas. I remembered the glow of light in the little shed as my daughter-in-law put our grandsons to bed for their "glamping" experience in Big Mama's She Shed. I remembered Ben and Flint pushing their new Tonka trucks around the yard, racing to dump the dirt and load some more.

I remembered. And in that moment, this little house became even more... our home.

Happy anniversary, little casita! May you always be all you can be... and more!!