Back at the very beginning of August, we came home from a week's vacation to discover that the hot water heater had overflowed in the attic - the attic?! who puts a water heater in the attic?! - and that our house was in need of renovation to be livable again.
For over a month now, we've been living in a hotel room with a three...now four...month old baby and a persnickety cat. (By the way, does anyone want a free cat? Because I know of one you can have.)
Our house has been pulled apart and put back together, and we are only a few days, (please, God,) from being back home.
But here's the thing: home isn't home anymore. It's just a house. A dusty, filthy, reeking-of-fresh-paint house. The walls are bare, the little decorative touches I have carefully added throughout the years are packed into boxes and shoved into a storage unit in the yard. The kitchen, so near and dear to my heart, is covered in Sheetrock dust and has been used carelessly by workmen for weeks and weeks. I didn't have a chance to empty the fridge of produce before we hastily packed up and got out, and so the clean, organized refrigerator, the product of my last week of pregnant nesting, is no longer clean or organized. Construction workers' white bread sandwiches reside on its shelves. Yuck.
I have grown so accustomed to being away from our house, and have felt so repeatedly betrayed by it, (as crazy as that may sound,) with every new delay and each discovery of additional problems, that I told Tyler the other night, "I've emotionally disconnected myself from the house."
And I have.
My home? It's not there. That's an empty shell, not the warm, cozy home we have made our own.
Now we are heading into the final stretch of work, and we will be moving back in this week. When I think of all the pictures to be rehung, and furniture to be carried back in, and clothes to unpack, dread pools in the pit of my stomach. Jeffrey's room had been so lovingly prepared before his arrival, and now it's empty...mine and Tyler's room, painted a calm, cool, pale grey and such a favorite place of mine to curl up and rest - empty. (Unless you count the dirt and dust. There's lots of that.)
We will have lots of help getting our house put back together, but, selfishly, all I could think was "but it was so perfect before!"
I knew something had to be done, so last night, I went and sat in the empty, echoing living room and had a little heart to heart with the house while Jeffrey slept in his car seat beside me. I promised to love her again, despite the mold and water damage that forced us to live in a hotel for one and a half months, and despite the fact that for the next several weeks there will be boxes everywhere and I won't really feel peaceful and comfortable. I promised to bake cinnamon coffee cakes in the kitchen, and to swing with Jeffrey on the back porch. I promised to replace my dead basil plants at the front door with living, thriving plants, and I promised to make an even prettier home than before.
And when I picked Jeffrey up and walked back to my car, away from my empty house, some of the dread about the coming days of chaos had lifted from the pit of my stomach. Because the truth is, I'm ready to go back and make our house a home...again.
