A Place to Grow

She had moved into the house with haste. Her belongings were unpacked as if they were being discarded - disgusting pieces of her past life that she wanted to forget. It was supposed to be temporary residence - a brief reprieve before the rest of her life started.

Sitting on the kitchen floor, knees frozen from being folded for far too long, she couldn’t bring herself to stand up. There were just a few more boxes to load, floors to sweep, and she could close a chapter that had been dragging on far longer than she had intended.

Six years. The temporary room to rent for a few months had slowly let her spread her wings to the whole house. She’d grown past her failed marriage, filled the living room with love, and the kitchen with warmth. She’d learned to embrace the glorious silence that comes with living alone.

It took her four months to notice the beautiful crimson front door. Another 2 months before she discovered the hauntingly beautiful echo of the upstairs bathroom. Two years before she rearranged the furniture from its original layout, and it was then that she finally turned on the TV and could sit by herself. Things had finally come into focus and she could see without an uncomfortable haze.

She gazed at the back of that front door, letting herself get lost in the memory of leaving on the first of many first dates. The anxiety and excitement and disappointment and hopelessness - the weight of karma for walking away from a marriage had made her back strong and her skin thick. She wouldn’t let anyone else come through that door. It was her gate guarding a fortress - a security system built around her feelings that called this house home.

And then, as if watching an old video, grainy with replays, she felt filled with the warmth from the memory of watching him walk down the hallway for the very first time. His bold Texas-style greeting as he had only paused at the front door; his uncontrolled excitement at being allowed to breach the walls. His zest for life and their relationship had overwhelmed her at times, but he had made even more room for her to grow.

He had embraced the house just as he embraced her. Its flaws were endearing - angles and curves and dark places were perfect for exploring. As their relationship grew, the house had become a palace, a battleground, and everything in between.

Just a few weeks ago they had walked out of the front door for the last time as his and her and returned as husband and wife. She let herself get lost gazing up at the ceiling, the light getting trapped by her ring and exploding across the empty space. She liked to think the house appreciated the adornments - that it approved of the happiness that had grown within its walls.

She sank backwards, feeling herself melt into the floor. This wasn’t the first time she’d gotten lost in the floor of the house. The hallway had caught her when she lost her best friend. Staring at the bedroom ceiling had helped her put it all in perspective. And the porch boards were the perfect hammock as she felt smaller and smaller gazing into the endless night sky. But this was the first time the kitchen had cradled her.

She let her eyes follow the lines of the house - the beams casting shadows into the peak of the ceiling; the geometric contract of the white balcony with the polished wood; how the tile marbling ebbed and flowed like a hidden spring, and if she closed her eyes just enough, she could nearly feel the cool water running under her fingertips.

The house was going to be gutted after they moved out. It had been built 30 years ago as a soft spot for her landlord’s father to find his feet after he’d become a widower. Since then it had hosted other members of the family when they found themselves in need of a stepping stone. She was the first non-relative to live within the walls, but had grown to be part of the family.

The house held more scars than the people it had sheltered. She was not the only one who had grown to fill it’s tall ceilings. Like an emotionally drained therapist, the house was due for some self care that went beyond drawing a hot bath. The house would be getting a full-on facelift, bringing its look into the modern era.

Lost in her thoughts, she followed tile flowing from under her fingertips to the edge of cabinets where she imagined the spring water churning and swirling. Her eyes slowly came to focus on an unfamiliar disruption against the white floorboard - a black triangle peeking out from the drawer she’d opened countless times.

She slid the drawer open and carefully un-wedged the black journal from its hiding place. It’s pages were filled with small, neat handwriting - delicately penned recollections of a real life love story.

She sat and read on the kitchen floor. Her joints stiff, her butt numb, and her heart full, she followed along with the simple beauty of the love story contained within the pages. She knew how it ended. Afterall, that’s why the house was built - to catch the windower as he fell. But at the height he lived with his pure appreciation he had for his late-wife made her understand the need for a soft landing.

She was feeling familiarly forlorn about the end of the story when a loose slip of paper floated out of the book and into the marble stream. It was a note, addressed to “whomever has found solace within these walls”.

The note’s author began by explaining that he believed the house was a healer - a place where people could find their footing, and then move on - never to be a permanent location for anyone. He then penned how he and his wife had received a gift when they got married of quite a large sum of cash. They’d saved it, hoping one day to use it for a trip of a lifetime, but between kids and work and the eventual illness, they never had gotten around to utilizing the funds.

In closing, he explained in careful detail how to remove the left side of the door frame of the bedroom closet to reveal a zippered makeup bag. The bag contained the entire sum of the $20,000 gift to be used - at least partially - to complete the trip of a lifetime.

***

With the door frame askew and bag clutched against her chest, she once again found herself on the floor of the house. She felt short of breath and filled with oxygen all at the same time. She needed a moment. She needed a moment to understand how the house had been holding this secret the whole time. She needed a moment to quiet the questions running through her mind. How had they missed it? How had she missed it? How had he not kept the money for himself? Afterall, he had remarried and moved on as well.

These thoughts were so loud that she initially missed the whispers of just how this would affect her own life. Finally the hum in her ears started to slowly dim, and for the first time in hours she stopped living in memories and thought to the future. An hour ago, she was starting the next chapter of her life - scraping together a house renovation fund from the bottom of her and her freshly minted husband’s combined piggy bank. They had accepted and embraced their honeymoon location - a couple of lawn chairs under the spans of their new empty house. And they had been so excited about building their life together from the ground up.

But this boost would let them move up the date they could maybe-possibly-fingers-crossed have a working kitchen and keep the contractor there to complete the bathroom rather than trying to test the marriage waters by building a shower together. The family that they had been delaying to grow was even closer to the horizon, and she found herself wondering what color the nursery would be.

But first, she let herself drift away to the mist and mountains and oceans and laughter where they would be getting lost during their trip of a lifetime.