Home

Twelve years ago today, we moved into our house. The first thing we did that first night, Darwin and I and baby Diana, five months old, was buy a Christmas tree and put it up in the curtainless bay window as a greeting to the neighbors. We slept on an air mattress in the vast expanse of our empty room, the baby's fussing echoing throughout every room. The next day, as the movers were finishing up, my family brought up the older four kids for their first glimpse of the place. They ran shouting through the halls. Doors slammed. Closets were investigated. The place was so huge -- how would we ever know what was behind every door?

A few of the doors upstairs

Now I know what, and who, is behind every door. There are still a few light switches that befuddle me, and places like the attic that I don't venture into for months at a time, but I know where I am. We have a tree up today too, though it can't be seen by the neighbors today because we have the curtains drawn against today's bone-chilling wind. (I found snow driven through the casement windows behind the curtains.) We now have seven children. The oldest three have some memories of Texas; the younger four don't remember any other home. 

Jennifer the dummy feels right at home in the front hall.

This home is worth remembering. It is handsome, capricious, tactile. It has quirks that are the stuff of family legend. It has perfectly proportioned nooks, and rooms in which Choices Were Made (I'm looking at you, kitchen). It has an empty shaft where the back staircase used to be, and an asinine pantry where the basement stairs used to be. We have brick and studs where one bathroom used to be. The other four bathrooms are outfitted with the top technology of 1929. We've never used the shower in the master bathroom because it leaks. Until a month ago, our diamond pane windows were so bowed from 100 years of wear on the lead caming that we had gaps large enough to admit a breeze. 

A poor kitchen renovation from 1990 bears its ultimate bad fruit: doors falling off and drawers falling out. That's the bottom of the irreparable silverware drawer sitting on the shelf of the cabinet below.

And I love it. Our house in Texas could never look better than the day it was built; it aged uglier and uglier. This home ages with beauty. Each year it gets richer. We have, perhaps, put more wear and tear on it than any previous generation, but a home is meant to be lived in. If a house can reflect the love it shelters, ours is radiant from the attic beams to the stone foundation. We hope everyone who enters the house soaks up some of our overflowing joy.