Archive | home sweet home

When Your Neighbors Can Hear Every Word

September 30, 2014 at 4:54 pm

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I’m not used to living so close to people.

Our first evening in our house in Coronado, we stopped still and listened in amazement. We were eating dinner on the deck, and we could hear the children on the other side of the fence, just 10 feet away from our dinner table, chattering with each other as they jumped on their trampoline. We could see them through the gaps in the bamboo fence. Just 10 feet away! We could watch their parents come out to break up an argument between them. We could hear the words exchanged, hear the inflections of frustration and exhaustion in their voices, see glimpses of their clothes and their gestures and their moving lips.

We turned back to our meal, trying to ignore the lives being lived just a few feet away, as we fed our children blueberries and turkey.

That night, Elliott and I put our kids to sleep and then leaned back on our own pillows to read before bed. It was 8 o’clock, quiet. And then — again! — we heard voices, different neighbors this time: a husband and wife, preparing to eat dinner in their garden.

“Wait! I told you to leave the salmon on the grill for a few more minutes!”

“But it’s done.”

“No, it’s not, look at this. Not flaking! It needs more time.”

I felt my own stomach muscles clench reflexively as the argument escalated. But then…

“Oh, you’re right, honey, I see you’re right. I’ll put it back on.”

I relaxed, impressed with this woman, this new neighbor of mine who knows out to pick her battles. Shyly, I peeked out the window. I could see a middle-aged couple in their quiet garden, he in a woven robe, living out their lives, completely unaware that I could hear every word and observe every action. I closed the shutters. There is a fine line between hearing words unintentionally and watching actions intentionally, and I wanted to respect their privacy.

We did not live close to our neighbors in Sicily. Our house was located on the end of a dead-end street, and the buildings around us were all garages. We lived right below a castle with a large courtyard, so we heard plenty of activity, but we had no windows facing the town or other people. All our windows faced outward towards the countryside: deep valleys, sprawling vistas, and people living hundreds of feet below us, half a mile away.

We liked it. As a mom, I became used it without even trying. The baby is screaming? No one will hear him but my own family. I’m disciplining Lena? No one will hear our interaction, meted out as I see fit. It’s a hot day? No one will see our entire family clad only in underwear.

But immediately our life in California is different. If we can hear them, they can hear us. This is partly because it is HOT here, and none of us have air conditioning, and so we’re all living with every single window open as wide as it can go. And all of us eating outside. And playing outside. And living outside, a few feet from individual decks and backyards, escaping the heat together and practically landing in each other’s laps.

This happened a couple of weeks ago:

“Is it someone’s birthday today?” my neighbor asked when we ran into her on the sidewalk.

“No, not today,” I said, somewhat confused.

“Oh, I thought I heard you singing ‘Happy Birthday’ earlier.”

“We did! I forgot. It’s my sister’s birthday today, and so the kids and I recorded a video of us singing for her.”

And all the while I’m thinking, OMG she heard that?! She can heard everything! She can hear every time I put the kids in time out! She can hear every time Gil has a temper tantrum! She can heard the kids arguing, me intervening, and every conversation we have about poop and pee. All. Day. Long.

Yes, she can hear everything. They can all hear the scattered, louder parts of our everyday lives.

Is there a way to turn this around, to make it something good?

Is there a way to redeem the crowding, to share something other than “Happy Birthday”?

Yes. I’ve been thinking about it for a month now, and I think yes.

What about hearing Lena’s little voice singing, “Jesus Loves Me”?

What about hearing Elliott and I disagree graciously over the grill, like our neighbors did?

What about hearing us talk to our children about obeying God and His Word, instead of disciplining them just because we’re embarrassed or annoyed?

What about hearing us get mad, get frustrated, raise our voices at our kids (we all do, it’s inevitable)… and then ask them for forgiveness?

“I was wrong, Lena, and I’m sorry. I should not have been so angry. Will you forgive me?”

Over the past month, this has slowly become my goal. To let my neighbors hear a life lived out with grace. With frustration, yes. With toddler tears, yes. With lots of “Happy Birthday,” yes. With plenty of failings, plenty of mess, plenty of reality. But also with grace shown to each other, pulled from a source greater than ourselves, filling us up, spilling over, flowing out, shared with others.

Through the windows, across the deck, over the fence, into their homes.

Or over a glass of wine in our backyard. Because I’d like to share that with our neighbors, too.

18 :: in Coronado, family, home sweet home, thoughts

My Biggest Regret of Our Move (So Far)

June 27, 2014 at 2:12 pm

I know. I know! We haven’t even left our house yet and I’m already having moving regrets? How many more mistakes will I make?

Well, probably a lot, knowing me. I already have several, such as packing the nutmeg and all our paper plates and plastic silverware.

But my biggest regret came in like a wrecking ball. About five days before the moving company came, I spent one morning transplanting all my flowers from my Sicilian blue ceramic pots into smaller plastic pots. I washed all the ceramic pots to get them ready for the move, already anticipating how pretty they will look full of flowers on the steps of our new deck.

Then I looked at my flowers and suddenly worried that they wouldn’t last in the smaller pots for very long. They needed larger homes with fresh soil ASAP. So I took photos of all of them with my phone, posted them on our local “Craigslist” board, and said I’d give priority to the person that would take “all of them for $45!”

Within five minutes, they were all sold.

“Can I pick them up tonight?” the buyer asked.

My breath caught in my throat as I realized what I had done.

First of all, I had sold them for far too little, obviously. They were worth at least twice that. Dummy.

But secondly, and more importantly, I had just sold a gigantic piece of what made this house our home.

I definitely have a black thumb, but somehow I had managed to keep quite a few of these plants alive, and bit by bit — with gifts from friends and purchases from the plant man at the market — I had built up quite a garden. I filled our front entrance with forgiving succulents, brilliant bougainvillea, and a geraniums that were coming into their own in the perfect weather. On the back deck I had several plants that I had cultivated for years, slapping little hands away from their bright flowers and watering and feeding and adding fresh soil season after season.

And some had been gifts, like the beautiful houseplant my mom got for me right after Gil was born, the one she transplanted and positioned herself. And the succulents from my friend Becca, who left them in my care last year before their own move back to the States.

I shouldn’t have sold all those. I should have given some away, putting them in the hands of friends as parting gifts to say thank you, to leave a piece of myself growing and living and basking in the sun in Sicily.

But I didn’t. I helped the buyer carry all my beloved plants up to his car that evening, and I even ran after his car with one last plant (my mom’s, incidentally) that I had forgotten.

“I kept it inside until the last minute so the leaves wouldn’t break on the ground,” I said, breathless, as I handed it to him. The plant was beautiful: a Golden Pothos with long vines, a leafy waterfall. My heart broke just a tiny bit as I waved goodbye. “Good luck! I hope you enjoy them.”

Because I surely did. And I think, in the way that plants do, they enjoyed us too, and their short, sweet season in our little yellow house.

12 :: in home sweet home, memories, military life, thoughts

“But where’s the rocking chair?” + Reflections on a Summer of Transition

June 25, 2014 at 2:52 pm

It was 12 noon, and Gil was still napping. Lena and I had been moving from activity to activity: reading books, doing puzzles, coloring pictures, baking pumpkin bread to finish up cans of pumpkin before we move, etc. Now we were drawing hearts and polka dots in her notebook, and I could tell things were deteriorating.

“Why don’t you try some polka dots now, Lena?”

“Nooooo… I caaaaan’t. I just want to watch you do it.”

“It’s easy. Just like this.” I tapped the marker up and down on the page a few times, and then handed it to her.

She banged it angrily up and down, mashing the marker tip into the paper.

“OK,” I said, blowing out hard through my nose, “I think this is enough. Let’s put this away and take a break. Do you want to read some books?”

The last thing I wanted to do was read picture books out loud. I desperately wanted to walk away, look at my phone, read a novel, anything.

“Noooo!!!” she said, “I want to color. I want you to do the polka dots!”

This was going nowhere, so I stood up and began to walk away. “When you have a good attitude, we can do something else. We’re going to take a break for now.”

Behind me, her frustration escalated, and then the frustration gave way to tears. I heard her get down from her chair and walk through the house. She walked into her dark bedroom, and then I froze when I heard her calling out through her tears:

“But where’s the rocking chair? I want to sit in the rocking chair! Where is iiiiiitt?”

Stunned, I raced into the room and picked her up in my arms.

“The movers took the rocking chair, Lena, remember? They’re taking it to our new house in San Diego. You like to sit in that chair when you’re upset, don’t you? It’s ok, I’m sorry. Come snuggle with me.”

We climbed into my bed, with her resting on my chest as I stroked her back. As her sobs subsided, I felt close to tears myself.

In her moment of need, she had forgotten that everything in our house was gone. Automatically, she had gone to a quiet place where she could sort out her emotions and take her own self-initiated time out. That peaceful place, I realized, had meant so much to her. The disorientation and despair had been clear in her voice.

How much more is she thinking and feeling inside? Since the movers came and went, both Lena and Gil have been cheerful, seemingly unfazed by our empty house and their altered surroundings. But so many objects of comfort — like the rocking chair — have been removed forever from this home, the only home they’ve ever consciously known.

Lena’s disorientation and sadness made me realize I’m not the only one who is going through a lot of emotional transition these days. These are big days for our family. There are so many goodbyes: the obvious ones to friends and church, and the more subtle ones to the quirky front door lock and the location of our clothes and the ability to navigate our bedrooms in the dark. It’s disorienting for all of us. Lena is just the first one to shed tears.

I know we’re not the only ones facing transition this summer. How many of you, staring at your computer or phone screen around the world, are also awaiting giant changes? There are new homes to be purchased, babies to be born, marriages to be made, books to be published, jobs to be finished, jobs to be started, and babies to be made.

At summer’s end, we’ll all be different people. You might be anticipating a lot of joy, or a lot of work, or a lot of goodbyes. The months ahead might be terrifying. Or wonderful. Or gut-wrenching. Or a relief. Or a trial.

So here’s to being aware. That’s a start. We’ll miss the rocking chair, and we’ll miss the ability to just curl up and be at home, and we’ll miss the old familiarity.

Hopefully this awareness will help us take better care of our husbands, our children, and ourselves. Especially after seeing Lena’s distress, I want to be more compassionate, patient, and sensitive. May we be rocks instead of adversaries (*cough*), a steady presence that our children and husbands can rely on as everything else changes.

And may we be careful to take care of ourselves, too, by being aware of our own limits. I want to be candid about my emotions, communicate clearly with my family, and take time outs for self-preservation when needed. May we be bold to seek closure, seek solitude, and seek rest.

For example, I have identified one thing I know I need to do to find closure to our time in Sicily. In our little town, I see so many familiar faces each day as I push the kids in the stroller to the playground, fish shop, gelateria, market, and panificio. I don’t want to just disappear one day. I love all those smiles, I love hearing “buon giorno!”, I love that sense of belonging that they give me. Before we go, I want to go to the owners of those shops and to our neighbors, give them a picture of our family, explain that we are moving, and say goodbye. (And I want to subtly pay back the man in the general store for the ten million chocolate bars he gave Lena over the last three years.) I know I’ll regret it if I don’t.

Ultimately, I want to draw strength from the Source. My own reserves are so shallow! So much has already changed, but there is so much more to come! I’m holding onto these words of promise:

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
Isaiah 26:3-4

20 :: in Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom Series, home sweet home, life lately, military life

We have a house in San Diego!

June 9, 2014 at 9:31 pm

We’ve been praying about a home in San Diego for months now, and it is such an amazing relief to finally have a home to go to, and address to count on, and a future within those four walls to imagine as our own! I get a little giddy whenever I think about this house and all the plans and dreams that come with it.

Here’s a little bit about how we are making this house work (budget-wise) and some of our dreams for our life there… along with a few photos from a realtor’s phone!

Elliott actually toured this house last month when he was in San Diego for work. At that point it was way out of our budget, and he didn’t even tell me about it until he noticed that the owners had lowered the rent.

As we scrolled through the pictures, I fell in love. Compared to the dozens of small, cramped, dark places we’d looked at online, this house was flooded with natural daylight. I loved the crisp contrast of the light walls, ceiling, and kitchen with the dark wood floor. I could imagine us fitting right in there, living and working and laughing and hosting in that spacious, open main room.

There are two unique features of this house. One is that the owners listed it as a furnished rental. This is actually not uncommon in Coronado, where owners will rent vacation homes to long-term tenants. The owners of this place might have been willing to move their furniture out, but they didn’t really want to have to do that.

In the end we decided to sell our furniture here in Sicily and rent this home with its furniture. This was really my preference. I like the way this house is decorated, and I am not sure our furniture would fit with its aesthetic. Besides, I bought most of our current furniture on Craigslist before moving here, and I am not emotionally attached to it. I feel like my/our styles are evolving, and I would rather let everything go now, live lightly, and then put time and thought into a home we care more about in a few years.

(What do you think? Am I crazy? Would you ever sell all your furniture and start again?)

The other unique feature of the property was the “tea house,” a stand-alone cottage on the property with a pull-out couch, bathroom, and kitchenette.

“Maybe we could rent it out on AirBnB,” Elliott suggested. A quick search of other AirBnB properties in the neighborhood revealed that we’d probably have no problem filling the tea house for a week or so every month.

“And I’ve always wanted to run a B&B,” I said, getting excited.

But then we had the brilliant idea to ask my dad if he’d be interested in renting the tea house instead. My dad works right outside San Diego two weeks every month, and he had already planned to rent a place closer to the city so that he could see us when he was in town. The tea house would mean a longer commute for him, but he’d be close to us, and my mom (who travels with him pretty frequently) would be right with us whenever she came to visit, too.

My dad didn’t have to think about it very long.

“Will the owners take out that pull-out couch if I bring my own bed?”

YES.

“OK, let’s do it!”

the Tea House

Now we had a hard decision to make. We loved this house, but we had two other homes offered to us at the same time. One was a town house, and the other was an apartment in a small condo building. Both of these homes were located in the heart of Coronado, and both cost a lot less each month in rent.

For a week, we negotiated, prayed, sought counsel, and talked. We talked about it so much that it became a running joke at the dinner table.

Me: “This house just seems to fit so much with our dreams and priorities as a family: hospitality, being outdoors, living near or with extended family….”

Elliott: “But I know we can do all those things in a smaller space, like we did in D.C. in our studio apartment when we first got married. We had dinner guests every week there even if they had to sit on the bed to eat.”

Gil: “Maaaaaaaama. Uh oh.”

*something crashes in the background*

Lena: “So what are you guys talking about?”

Me, laughing: “What do you think, Lena?”

Lena: “Our house in San Diego?”

Elliott: “Yep….”

[we won’t be keeping the flat screen!]

Spending more on rent was hard for us, because we’re really thrifty people and are careful to live within our means. Other than our mortgage on my studio in D.C., we’re debt-free, and we generally examine every angle (freebies, hand-me-downs, living without, coupons, discounts, airline miles, hotel points, etc.) before we spend money. We can afford this house, but it will mean less in savings for us for three years.

But we also don’t want to live forever waiting for “someday.” Someday we’ll have a home that we actually want to invite people over to. Someday we’ll try to live close to our extended family. Someday we’ll make the sacrifices to prioritize what we say really matters to us.

When we stepped back and looked at the broader picture, we realized that this house is exactly what we’d been hoping to find in Coronado.

Home large enough to host traveling family and friends (even whole families!)
Indoor/outdoor space that we could offer as a gathering place to our future church, Bible study, and new local friends
Space for siblings to live with us if they decide to move to California (as one is seriously considering)
Home where my dad could live with us part time (huge huge bonus!!!)
A peaceful place filled with natural light where we can learn, read, play, and live together as a family

And so, with some fear and trembling, we signed the lease!

Once the actual commitment was made, I felt enormous joy and thankfulness. This home is, in so many ways, the home we’d dreamed about when we thought about living in San Diego. It’s just a mile and a half from Elliott’s new office, and he’s planning to bike or run every day. It’s a mile from two beaches, and it’s less than half a mile from the commercial heart of Coronado, the beautiful library, and Spreckels Park.

Elliott is really excited about his work, and I am really excited about continuing another chapter of creative, hospitality-focused motherhood, so we both feel like we have so much to look forward to in our everyday lives there. We’ll live simply — we have to! — but we will be in a neighborhood where we hardly ever have to get in the car, where people live outdoors most of the year, and where we already have connections that we are excited to turn into friendships.

This season in Sicily has been filled with blessings but also hardships. I know these will continue in this next phase of life, and I know we can’t even imagine some of the gifts and the heartaches that lie around the corner.

Elliott and I were reading Pilgrim’s Progress last night, and we came to the chapter where Christian and Hopeful are trapped in Doubting Castle and can’t find a way out. Suddenly, after days of beatings and starvation, Christian remembers the key named Promise hanging around his neck. Within seconds, that key unlocks the gates to the pilgrims’ freedom.

There is the obvious lesson here that we need to remember God’s promises in order to be released from times of doubt, depression, and discouragement. But there’s also a more subtle message that if Christian had been remembering God’s faithfulness, he would have remembered that key around his neck much sooner and would have been long gone from Doubting Castle.

We’ve been given so many blessings, and I’m sure this house will be a great blessing to us in a lot of ways. But I know there will be hard times, painful relationships, and deep misunderstandings in this house, too. As we leave Sicily and prepare to move to this new house and city, I want to remind myself often of God’s faithfulness, God’s goodness, God’s promises to me and to my family.

We have a history with this God. A good history. He who promised is faithful, and He will remain so!

“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way
and to bring you to the place I have prepared.”
Exodus 23:20

42 :: in Coronado, home sweet home, hospitality, military life

Living with Kids in Italy: My Guest Post on Design Mom!

May 21, 2014 at 3:12 pm

Super exciting news today: our home is featured on Design Mom!!! I worked on the photos and interview for this guest post for weeks, and it was thrilling to finally see it in print!

My friend Courtney suggested I be a part of Design Mom’s Living With Kids series several months ago. I was intimidated — we are not super artistic and our home is not “design-y” — but I knew I wanted to take good pictures of our home before we moved. I emailed Gabrielle to see if she would consider me, and she immediately emailed back and said, “Let’s do this!” I did a happy dance.

But then the real work started! I had to take amazing photos of our home… but I have two little children, basic photography skills (I still can barely use the manual settings on my camera…), and a never-super-clean house. But Elliott was as excited about this as I was, so one Saturday morning he gallantly entertained the kids for hours the while I photographed our kitchen from every. possible. angle.

And then we looked at the photos and I took more photos.

And then we looked again and I took still more!

Eventually I moved on to the rest of the house, cleaning rooms during nap times and photographing them, or cleaning rooms with antsy children around my knees and begging them to stay near me so they wouldn’t get in the shot for “just another minute, and then we can play.”

It’s all worth it in the end because I love these photos. (And the 800 other ones on my laptop that didn’t make it into the guest post!) They capture so much of our home, life, and memories right now. I’ll treasure these forever.

Gabrielle also asked me some really insightful questions about how we ended up living overseas, my favorite parts about life abroad, and what it’s like to live in Sicily with kids. If you want to know more about how we’re raising our kids overseas, I think the interview is a great summary. (I know you’ve gotten a lot of parenting and living overseas talk here and here recently, though!)