New Growth

It’s a peculiar experience walking through the ruins of your home.

This is the floor of my study about two months after the fire. It was one of the rooms on the first floor hardest hit. The roof burned away and the ceiling was on the floor. The knotty pine paneling had been charred or eaten away by flames, but so many parts of the room were intact, almost burned beyond recognition, but there still.

The weeks before the fire I was working on a book proposal. In the ruins you could see books I was referencing as well as pieces of a friend’s proposal I was using as a model. It was so strange to stand in that room, that no longer had a roof and walls, but to see paper that survived.

I had the study one week.  We had shuffled around the bedrooms to create room for it.  The girls moved in together and Paul and I traded with them, moving into a smaller room that had been Lydia’s and changed Eden’s into the study.  All the bedrooms we redid, repainting the walls and replacing the floors.  Everything was fresh and new.  The week before the fire Paul and my brother-in-law, David moved in my old oak desk, that was a little too big, but I was using until I found something I liked better.  Days before the fire they moved in the sofa that I knew would be a place for Paul and some of the kids to lounge.

The day before the fire I was planning the bookshelves for the hundreds of books that were stacked in the hall and dining room, waiting to move in.

There is a small study, also on the northwest corner of the new house.  Since we moved it has been the dumping ground of all our records, supplies for Eden’s home school and everything related to the build.  A few months ago I made some semblance of order but during the holidays it became the gift staging area and a new mess.

One of my excuses is that I have been homeschooling Eden and need to find a desk or table big enough for both of us to sit beside each other.  I haven’t found one that pleased me, so we’ve been doing school at the island or the couch, which is fine, but we’re constantly schlepping her books and notebooks around.

Today was the breaking point.  It wasn’t dramatic, I just hit a wall.  I’m working on a new project which means a new proposal and I need to spread out some papers and make room for a stack of books.  I need a desk.  I have a small, antique library desk that my brother-in-law lent me, but it’s not comfortable  and doesn’t afford a lot of space.

Never mind that.

I cleared it off and Christopher helped me move it in front of a window.  There are still baskets full of records that need to be sorted and piles of papers too, but this is it.   I’m claiming this space.  I’m writing in and through the mess.