This house...

With the construction going on around here, it makes me stop and think about our house. On yet another trip to Lowes today, I passed one of my favorite houses. It’s a big old Victorian with a wrap around porch a few towns over. It’s on a winding side road, very private with fields and and a big creek stretching behind it. I slow down every time I pass it. I admit it… I suffer from house lust.

I drive by slowly and imagine having enough bedrooms for all our kids. A dining room big enough to seat a huge crowd. The big wrap around porch to spend rainy days lazing on. Open fields and woods for the kids to explore for hours on end. Nooks and crannies everywhere for them to play hide and seek. In my mind, that house is a magical place, a place where everything would be just perfect.

I thought a lot about that house today, as I searched Lowes for more plumbing parts, and thought about it some more on the drive home. Tomorrow is Easter, and we are having a crowd over that seems to grow with every phone call. A house like that would be just perfect for gatherings like that.

As my mind wandered, I began thinking about our own little house, with the small bedrooms filled with bunk beds, the dining room that we all squeeze into on crowded Wednesday spaghetti nights, the little porch Fitz built me, just big enough for a swing. Suddenly, that other house isn’t looking so perfect anymore.

How quiet a house must be with so many bedrooms… could you still sit at the top of the stairs after you put them to bed and listen to the whispers and giggles that continue long after they should be sleeping? A large formal dining room would be lovely, but would it feel the same without kids piled like puppies, elbowing eachother until someone falls off a bench and the rest dissolve into laughter? Big airy front porches are beautiful, but what good is it if there are no neighbors close enough to call out to in the evenings as everyone gets home from work? And children running through fields is a pretty picture, but is is the same as kids running from house to house, gathing more kids for a backyard kickball game?

No… the magic is right where we are. This house is perfect. It has the only feature I could ever ask for, a large, open front door with a welcome mat that calls out to everyone.