spaces, shelters

With all the things I could possibly start out blogging about, it is actually living and sleeping and eating spaces that are on my mind this morning. (Well, the trivial things on my mind--I'll blog about the more serious later when I have processed further)

I have had about an hour of quiet this morning! The first daytime kid-free quiet since we left on our trip! Here in my parent's house I banished the girls to the basement, and have not heard a peep (this is what doors and separate floors are good for). E is asleep upstairs, unless he is awake now and crying and i just can't hear him (what doors and separate floors are bad for--or wait, maybe that is good. . . ) It is seriously so strange to be in such a big house. My parents bought this house when I was at the end of second grade: a nice three story (unless you include the walk-up attic, which makes 4 stories!), three bedroom, two bath red brick house. Then my parents added on to the house after us kids were all grown and out on our own, anticipating a time when their children would all come back to visit with their own families, and they doubled its size--even added more basement! The house is gorgeous, and they did the addition in the same turn-of-the-century brick and moldings and window styles, so the addition is perfectly integrated into the old. The house is familiar and comfortable, and does not feel oversized, just nicely spacious, and when you have family gathering for an extended visit, all the rooms are used and appreciated. But it is, as you can imagine, very different for us to live in such a large house, and I have been noticing:

--it takes forever to do something simple like get the girls ready for dinner, since invariably their hairthings are upstairs and b's apron is in another room (since sometimes we eat in the dining room and sometimes the breakfast nook) and the kitchen counter is as far from either eating area as practically the whole length of my house, so to get all the cups and plates of food and things for each child to the table takes like 15 minutes. of course, if this was our house, we would have necessary things in convenient locations, and the girls would be helping out more, but when you are in someone else's house and using their nice breakable dishes, and there is already so much hubbub of extra people in the kitchen, you just tend to keep the children's "usefulness" to a minimum. ; )

--i am not used to having to hunt down my children, even for something as simple as telling them to get ready for dinner (which contributes to the issue in the last point). But even in our tiny house I can't stand people yelling back and forth to each other from different rooms (although by far I am the worst offender--seems like the girls always start an argument that requires a referee in the bedroom as soon as I am comfortable with a nursing baby, etc), so you can imagine that I would not allow it (or practice it) here in such a big house where you would really have to bellow to be heard elsewhere. I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs hollering up to mom when I was a kid, wanting to verify her location the lazy--I mean efficient way before climbing the stairs, and while mom disliked the practice, she and dad would end up calling up to us just as often. It really is so tempting. In our house, I know where any person is at almost all times. But here, if the kids are off somewhere and not being too loud in their play, I might not know where they are. And boy, does it get old trudging up and down the stairs with over a stone* of baby in your arms looking for children. But so far, no yelling!

--which leads to my other thought. It is so peaceful here! I realized how much I have missed the summer breeze wafting through an open window, something that is not possible in our house, with those large, antique picture windows that do not open. My parent's house is on a quiet street, with no through traffic, and so while you can hear traffic from a busy road just a block away, the sound of the cars is so muffled by the old trees lining all the streets that you don't really notice it when you are outside, and can't hear it at all inside. A very far cry from our house, where the road out front may not be very big, but it is busy and there is nothing to insulate us from the cars, esp. at night when we are sleeping next to one of those old, big windows and the sound sometimes literally rattles the window panes.

Also, too, it gets cold enough at night that you probably would not want windows open all the time where we live, in that little perfectly conceived summer icebox (such a relief to those visiting from the dry heat of inner CA who built the house). But here, the weather has been overcast and gray, but *just right* temperatures, the kind of breezes that don't feel cool but instead feel like spidersilk velvet, like smooth water, like they are teasing you to lift your arms and fly away with them across endless green fields. The air outside was so luscious yesterday when we got back from the wedding trip to Chicago, that I could not bear to be inside and took the girls on a walk around the neighborhood. The window in our room was open all night, and we fell asleep to the patter of a gentle rainstorm, and woke to the cheerful, gentle chirping of birds.

We have birds galore in our yard in CA, but somehow their sounds are more gentle here--I wish I knew more varieties to know who is making what sound here or there. I think most of the birds here are little chirpy things--at home we have mostly woodpeckers and owls and stellar's jays and hummingbirds--and they just naturally sound sweeter.

Now, just so you know, I love listening to the birds back home, and I love to be in my little house in the rain--nothing is a cozier sound. But there we are safe and shielded from it--here, we were safe and friendly with it, like listening to the conversation of strangers who are clearly good friends, people who you don't know but who are making you feel awash in well-being by their enjoyment of each other. The rain brought such pleasant smells to the room, and the occassional small gust was a delicious wash over the skin in an otherwise still and muggy room. It was like a welcome visit by a good neighbor. The rain on our roof back home makes me aware of and thankful for the blessing of a roof over our head; the rain out the window here makes me aware of and thankful for the blessing of rain.

I could make more observations, and maybe I will before this week-long visit here at my parents' is over. But at the moment, I am perfectly content with both the spaces I am in and the spaces I will enjoy returning to, so different as they are. Maybe that is a good definition of being at peace.

*that's imperical measure--but he does feel like a stone after you have carried him for a while!