At the door of the old house and new life is me, Laura. I purchased my house in 2011 after moving back to the Midwestern college town I’d done most of my growing up in, leaving a marriage, and then living a few wickedly confused years divorcing, saving money, and struggling to find a place to call my own. That’s a run-on sentence, I know, but that was how it was. I lived a run-on life. In the beginning, this house provided me a place to launch myself post-divorce. I started the blog with the idea that owning and rehabilitating this house was my entry into a radically different life than I led before. I was right, in one way. But in other ways, I underestimated the complexity of the transition.
The lesson that I've learned well since starting this blog is that the idea of a "new" life, while meaningful and worthy and important, was not a dot on a map I could journey to, arrive at a certain address, and walk through the door, no matter what I named a new blog. A new life is an ever-evolving, fluid thing, like a slow drive down a long neighborhood street, through shadows here and there, and then sunshine in gentle dapples and strong rays. Even after the momentous opening of the front door, life continues to unfold itself gradually as family members grow and change, and time passes. The new life in the old home has contained fresh challenges and heartbreaks, but also loads of love and strength and joy that I couldn't even imagine from the very beginning.
In part, that meant meeting Tom in 2015, and marrying him in 2017. It's meant welcoming his four children-- Karleigh, MacKenzie, Hannah, and Eli-- and adding them to my heart; while he added mine--Grant, Noah, Ben, and Joe-- to his. Though the kids are mostly adult and college age, we've become a family-- a large and messy jumble of personalities and goals-- and yes, all of the jokes about 'Eight is Enough' have been made. The old house that served to shelter my shaky beginnings as a single mom also expanded spiritually if not physically (like our hearts) to accommodate all these enormous familial changes. While we and the house are not perfect and suffer occasional meltdowns of patience (people) or plumbing (house), I'm still deeply grateful for all this home has given me.
In the middle of all this flow and evolution there's me, still trying to be Laura. I am a creative type who works as a writer for a living, and sometimes manages to eke out a few sentences on my own time, here on this blog. Thanks for joining me here. Enjoy your visit!
