ode to dave

It’s my last night here. Tomorrow I’m taking Charlie and Maggie, and as much of the remaining stuff I can squash into the Escape, down to Connecticut. I’ll get there when there’s still daylight, but Kevin won’t be home til close to midnight: he’s at a conference in Chicago.

It’s so easy to ramble around in my head, in this nearly empty house, and obsess over what to take with me tomorrow. Or to get lost in reading the internet. After a month of frantically packing (and working), and not spending any time outside with the camera, I need to make myself sit still and feel my feelings: I will miss this place. I am looking forward to what life is bringing us, but that is the subject of a different post. It’s my last “official” night here. I just want to...write an Ode to Dave.

Dave – this house, this 10 acres of woods and beaver pond – is home. The first time I ever came here was in the spring of 2006. Kevin and I had just started courtin’ for real. We stood in the kitchen, looking out the windows. He cuddled me from behind and said, “welcome to your kitchen!”. And just like that, I was home.

(Kitchen as it looked a few years later, after an IKEA remodel.)

We got married that summer, in the yard.

It was a come-as-you affair, very informal. We had a tent, and folding chairs in the lawn for the ceremony. You carried your own chair to a table. My best friend (and maid of honor)’s do-it-yourself toenail painting enterprise was a main source of entertainment.

...as was the traditional Ring of Fire dance.

I can’t possibly attempt to convey all the changes that have occurred in me, and in dave – not to mention in me-and-dave – since then.

No, I’m wrong: I can convey that, that’s what this whole blog has been about.

A normal person would insert a series of representative photos here, recapping the last few years of the inner and outer transformations, but I’m just not up to it. I’ll just say this: Living here has been the first time, since I was a little kid, that I let myself completely ground to a place that I was actually living in year-round.

As I wind things down here, stripping the place bare and sleeping on the couch in the living room, I am reminded of moving here full-time in the spring of 2007. Michele visited, and we all three crashed on the living room floor.

May 7, 2007. Michele on the left on the futon, Kevin on the right. This is pre-addition.

Getting ready for this move has been intense, and it’s also been cold.  I haven’t taken the time to go out with the camera. I know: spiritual suicide. But today I gritted my teeth and had a look around.

The first crocus. Hey, buddy!

Well, it’s late. I have a lot to do, and I need my rest. I will fall asleep on the couch, gazing out at the stars over the ridge. Tomorrow night I will finally be with my love, after a month apart. And that, my friends: that is home.