nothing breakable in this river

kayaking in the hallway

bouncing peanut

We ventured upriver along the Hudson over the weekend. We drove the curvy Sawmill Parkway. Still the ghosts of last summer's tragedy haunt the exits we pass...and we had a narrow escape as we came around a curve, halting to someone backing up at a missed exit. The pileup was nearly missed.

 Lisa and John's house is so colorful and joyful. It is fully and artfully created. Unusually pieced together with found windows, doors, chandeliers. All are hand picked, fitted with slowly evolving paper walls and decks without railings. Each time we visit, their bedroom is in a different location. In the dusty basement with a dirt floor, or in the upper attic, now stacked with paintings. This time it was in the second apartment, where we once slept in the nook (now office) with an incredible river view.

 Each time I go there, I dream of my house, of the house I've been creating my entire life. Even as a child I dreamt of it. I've collected pieces, like Lisa -only on a much smaller scale- to compose my window or my garden wall.  I saved a piece of green stained glass that came from a window in my grandparents house. That piece was broken when my aunt through a shoe at me when I was 8 or 9. I have a collection of pottery shards I've saved from around the world to be assembled into my sculpted garden wall. 

I never dreamed of having children or a husband or a family, but a house. All that other stuff was there too I guess, but in the background. People floated in and out like at my grandparents house- friends, neighbors, family- all equally important, loved, welcomed, fed and cared for. In my house there are lots of people of all ages. Nothing ever really neat but always comfortable and creative, bright, sunny with a big garden and lots of trees. 

Now I have a child, a husband, a family- the things I didn't dream of until much later in my visions manifest- and I still don't have this house. I know I will, maybe more that one. I do have a wonderful home today, though it is a rented apartment, with no land attached. And I have fears of ever implanting the stained glass or the pottery shards into a single location. I've moved so often, throughout my life especially as a child, that must be why I dreamed of the house. The secure place where I could create all my vistas,  store my china, plant my visions. And over these years I have re-learned the poetry of security, of home, of place and family. Thank you for everything that I have today and the inspiration and love I find in my friends and their home creations.