the weird road home

I'm thinking about my house a lot about it as we tear it apart for some much-anticipated renovations.

When our realtor first showed us a picture of this house, I said no way. I didn't even want to visit! Fortunately, he is a wise man and encouraged us to give it a shot. We saw some work that needed to happen, yes, but we also saw that this was a place that could be home.

Our second son was supposed to be born about a month after we moved. No dice! He was born six days before we settled on the purchase, leaving my husband and family to do all of the work of moving and me to sit in the NICU staring at a plastic box.

We are blessed to maintain contact online with the former homeowners, who lovingly raised a family here. I look forward to building as many memories in this home as their family did!  We've enjoyed finding fun 'accidental memories' as we live here, such as a grade-school portrait behind a radiator, a seven of clubs under a floor board, a school writing assignment in the attic, and an old shaving kit on a long-forgotten shelf.

God orchestrated many wonderful people to arrive  in our neighborhood at a similar time, surrounding us with fellow Christians. Our house has three boys. Beside us has four boys. Two houses past that has three more boys. Behind us are three girls and a boy. And within just a moment's drive, we have our dearest friends and my sister's family. And I'm not even including a half-dozen more fabulous, engaging families we've met an neighborhood picnics and on walks. We are so blessed to have nearby stable, loving influences on our family, and friends for our kids. Plus, we've already traded countless babysitting hours. You can't beat this place! 

I sat on my neighbor's porch tonight, sipping an iced chai while our children ran around, whacking each other with light sabers. All I can think is how cool is it that God brought all these people into our lives?  And unless the boys do successfully burn one or more of the houses down, it will be like this for many years to come!

there's no place like home

It's amazing what home means to us.  Dorothy told us there's no place like it.  Home is familiar, comforting.  In our position as foster parents, Matt and I are confronted with the reality of what "home" means in an unusual way. 

Home is where you're comfortable.  In some ways, since my parents moved out of my childhood home for a lovely townhome that's free of the scars a house earns when it shelters young children (in our case, crayon stars covering an entire wall in the basement) -- I don't have that "going back home" nostalgic feeling anywhere like you see in movies when the city girl goes back to the farm.  

My childhood home actually came back on the market a few years ago, so my sister and I took a tour.  My parent's bedroom was full of exercise equipment, and on my mother's formerly pink living room wall hung an enormous Andy Warhol-style painting of a dog smoking a cigar.  The strangest thing was the traffic light in the corner.  

I wasn't home on that real estate tour, even though that pineapple wallpaper was still in the hallway.  Even though I could still open the doors without the hinges squeaking.  Even though I could still make it up and down the stairs seamlessly without even touching the landing.  

Home when you're writing fiction is that familiar place.  You're comfortable there, the boundaries are far away.  Maybe the character is based on someone you know, or on a part of you.  Maybe the dialogue is a conversation you've had, or better yet, one you wished you could have had!

As safe as home may be, it isn't always exciting.  The adventures are probably elsewhere.  Writing The Senator's Youngest Daughter was an adventure for me, and actually most of it did take place at home.  Writing the familiar parts might have been easy, but it wasn't the best.  

Writing the "home" parts where siblings are talking, where parents are joking easily, where communication happens in a loving marriage... those flowed naturally.  But writing the adventure parts, the scary parts, the dangerous parts? That's a rush.  

If I'm home, I'm happy.  But if this home doesn't exist in whatever setting, or if it's being threatened in XYZ fiction world, I can imagine other ways of being happy.  Defeating the aliens, questing successfully, collaring the bad guys, maybe even stealing the crown jewels.

I love my life.  I'm hugely blessed by my life.  But if there were another version of my life (for example, the fictional life of the protagonist in an awesome novel), I'm pretty sure I could rock it.