The birds are singing out this spring day like they know what is required. They know what it is to be free, perfectly themselves, doing what they are made to do.

In the garden we are restoring, I am surprised by the number of birds that hop around, the soil their ballroom, under branches and bushes and leaves. I am sure they are throwing grand parties under the foliage, tasting the sweet soil as they forage and gossip and sing. I am surprised each time I walk through the path that intersects their (literal) stomping grounds, expecting birds to be gliding in blue sky, not dancing around, making the plants rustle like they are going to sway over to me, hands on hips, and threaten me to a duel.

Two weeks ago, after I gave up straining the fruit picker for the last remaining oranges from the robust tree holding court in the middle of the garden, (I have, I am sure, personally eaten at least 150 oranges since I started picking them in late fall) I sat in the back corner of the yard and read for two hours the book Justin got me for Christmas, a story of discovery and redemption for an English garden abandoned since World War I.

The skin on my fingers are covered in paint stains, even after scrubbing them. My hands are stiff with cold. I am brushing the empty walls of the new house with paint—pretty words like Bibliothèque, Ritual, and Côte d'Azur. Lots of splotchy squares. Watching light and shadow change each hue as it dries.

The next few weeks are ones of transition. Saying goodbye to a home of almost 16 years, walls that hold stories of my children’s laughter, sacred conversations with friends—so many prayers and arguments and dreams.

I struggle with sleeping most nights lately—the anticipation of moving, of completing all that needs to get done—leaving me restless in the hours when my mind and heart should be most at peace.

Justin encourages me to honor the emotions I am feeling. We talk about the challenge of the past two years, due to the pandemic—and the changes in our family as children grow up and do their best to be independent, preparing for the final moving away. So much moving and staying in one place.

I sit in an empty house, an outdoor teak table pulled inside, a temporary place to sit and prop up my computer, a place that is in a state of becoming, a place of dreaming, a place undeserved but accepted with shaking hands. We were given this new home in mid-October, a home less than a mile from the little 100 year-old bungalow where we’ve lived for the past 15 years.

It is house I’d noticed for more than a decade on my early morning runs, when the sky was still pink—and on walks with our dog or when running errands downtown. It is a block away from our old condo, the first home we owned and lived in with our three then tiny kids. A house inspired by its original English-style cottage built in 1934, with a garden out front that looked like magic and with leaded front windows that shone when light hit the diamond-shaped glass.

My father-in-law, for crazy and beautiful reasons, had been wanting to give us a gift—and, on a Thursday afternoon, when we saw that this house was offered for sale, he went with us to see it. Suddenly, a few days later, on a Sunday, the offer was accepted, and on the 18th, we got the keys.

I am in the tension. I miss my home.The smell of a burning candle. The creak of floorboards under bare feet. The windows opened wide in the morning. The bluejay in the primroses outside the kitchen.The kitchen itself is torn up, the first place I would head to each morning. Tiptoeing to open the shutters, letting out the dog, waiting for the light to flood in while the house still sleeps.My soup pot is tucked away in storage. My baking sheets in boxes with my spices and mixing spoons. I miss cooking. I miss baking. I miss the familiarity of simple things: walking our dog around our neighborhood, going across the street to get the mail each day, visiting Berta, my ninety-two-year-old neighbor, playing music through the speakers while I write and then make dinner, leaning on the counter while my kids eat a snack and tell me about their day. Read More . . .