We've been in the new house three weeks. Still unpacking. Every belonging let out to breathe deepens the reality it's our home now. I loved our last place, a duplex in a walkable neighborhood. Friends in every direction. We lived there a couple months shy of 16 years. Josh and I got married there. And before that, we lived in an identical building next door to it. Somewhere in my bones I hoped I'd grow old there, even though I knew I wouldn't. We had four different landlords over the years. Now, we're our own landlords. Or really, the bank is our landlord. The city, too. Ownership comes in droplets like water from a hamster bottle.
Shawn's sick today, so I keep an ear open for when he might need help. I watch a downy woodpecker try to find bugs in the spaces between bricks on one of our front porch columns. I access fears I've never had before. Are there bugs in those bricks? Is the whole place infested? Did we make a mistake? Shawn texts a request for ice water. I climb the stairs to his attic room and notice how much more space we have now for the cat to shed hair. I made a critical error last night and said at dinner how lucky Shawn's been. That even though moving had been stressful, he hadn't gotten sick. Well. Don't get cocky, kid.
Josh texts from work to see how Shawn's doing. I tell him it started with stress dreams, and now he can't sleep at all from the nausea. He dreamed of spiders. I had spider dreams last night, too. The difference is my body doesn't care today and Shawn's does. People sometimes confuse us for each other at a distance, but we couldn't be more different.
Friends have asked what we've done to the house so far. A list: curtains, rugs, bar stools, bookshelves, a fridge, a washer and dryer, lamps, cleaning, arranging, and ignoring. We ignore what we can't fix yet, like the chicken coop the seller left in the backyard. He told us he intended to burn it before he left, but he didn't have time. "Hey! You can burn it now!" he said, like it might be something the three of us would enjoy doing together. And maybe we will. It looks like an outhouse with one end higher off the ground than the other, possibly so the eggs would roll downhill into a basket. Who knows.
There are squirrels in the walls. Don't worry, I have a humane plan to get them out and keep them out. I've always been ambivalent about them. No longer. Every squirrel is an enemy. Even the one Travis Kelce fed a piece of bread in college.
I love this house, though. I love the kitchen. I love that one of the spare bedrooms is my art studio now. I love that the cat had to learn to climb stairs for the first time in his life. I love the front porch. I love the walk-in shower. I love that when the Chiefs win a game, the fireworks are louder here because we're closer to the stadium. I love that there's so much work ahead of us. I love that Shawn's been tending the yard little by little. I love that he found a rug rolled up and buried in the back yesterday. I love that he's waiting for me to buy a shovel so he can excavate it fully. I love that we have no idea if something terrible is wrapped up in that rug. I love that soon we will.