This Place

I had just come home from a meeting that left me feeling drained and discouraged. It was a meeting of a group of presumably like-minded moms, yet not for the first time I found myself with the uneasy feeling of not fitting in and having wasted a precious evening away. When I got home it was to laundry still on the line and the choice of giving in to the discouragement and leaving it right where it was (and risking not having anything decent to wear the next day…) or mustering my last reserves and bringing it in off the line.

After dropping my things inside, I dragged myself back out and up onto the patio wall to reach the lines. I quite enjoy my clothes lines. They are rigged up with pulleys, making them easy (and yes, a bit fun) to use. The freshness is a small joy, and the rhythm of pinning up or taking down is – if not soothing – then reassuring somehow. Squeeze-squeeze-squeeze-squeeze, shake out clothes, drop in basket, pins in bucket, reel it in.

And so I started, pausing now and then to look around. There are no lights on the patio, or there is one, but we never think to use it. It wasn’t long before I felt a sense of being cradled, encircled. The steady drone of crickets, the warm summer-night air, the garden, trees, fields, the moon above the trees to my left and the stars in the deep purple sky. And (looking past the lit-up clutter of the porch), I could see some favorite corners of the house: a bit of the built-in bookshelves filled with goodness, part of the pipe leading from the woodstove to the chimney and the warm bricks of the hearth behind. Glimpses of things loved and the potential for inspiration and comfort.

This is our homestead. It is solid and settled. It is in no hurry, it surrounds us and supports us. It has been here for nearly 200 years, and unknown (to us) caretakers, and now it is our turn: to live in its walls and land, to be nurtured and grown by it and to nurture and grow it in return. There have been and surely will be not a few nights or days of discouragement and the like. But I’m slowly learning that those are temporary and part of the journey, and that there is gentleness and comfort to be had in this place, if I can be open to it.

I’m glad I mustered the will to finish the laundry.