Sweet (New) Home, Alabama

Rebecca, me and Mother, after a lovely girls' lunch out

I was quiet for a week there for a great reason--I got to fly to Alabama to help my parents move into their new home there!  My parents were loathe to leave their house in Illinois, which they loved (as did their girls!), but various factors made it the wise choice, so now they are settling in to a lovely house in Tuscaloosa, where my elder sister and her family also live.

They closed on the house last Weds. and I arrived that night, so I could be there to help start moving things in on Thursday morning.  I was so glad I could be there, for many reasons. First of all, it was so nice to see my parents again, and visit my sister Rebecca and her family--distance being what it is, my last time visiting Alabama was about nine years ago.  My niece Emily has just graduated from high school, and her younger sister Sarah will follow in another year, and that just proves how quickly the time is passing. So I am very glad I got to spend some time with them before those girls are completely grown up and moved away!  I also really enjoyed seeing how my sister and her family live, where they work, etc--all those little details of life that never get conveyed through phone calls or blog comments.  I have always found it fascinating that my parent's three daughters all grew up and evolved into very different kinds of cooks--our family definitely being the most unusual!--and I really liked getting to sit down and share meals that are a reflection of my sister's family's tastes and their living in the South.  Like hominy grits for breakfast and eating them the traditional Southern way with butter and pepper.  Yum!  (And I am definitely making that mashed potato dish for my kids, Rebecca. And I want to try Chris's fire station green bean dish too--picante sauce and onion flakes, right?)  One highlight was going out to a restaurant on the river and trying fried catfish, fried pickles, hoppin' john (basically black eyed peas and rice) and mustard greens.  All tasty! The last two I mixed together--probably something only a Yank would do--and added a little chopped fresh tomato from my salad and YUM.  I might try that at home too! 

So, the briefly living life with loved ones part was one of best things about the trip.  Then too, Rebecca managed to arrange errands so that we could do "drive by" sightseeing, and I enjoyed those glimpses of history in their town.  Esp. meaningful after our year studying the Civil War still so fresh in my mind.

The Gorgas House, one of the few buildings on the campus that survived burning during the Civil War.  My new fantasy house.

Me and my niece Emily, at Capitol Park, seeing the ruins of the original capitol building, burned during the Civil War.  So so cool!

Finally, it sounds kinda weird to say that actually, the whole helping my parents do some unpacking and settling some things into place into their new home was also one of the highlights of the trip.  But it was--I enjoyed every single minute. As I tried to tell someone afterwards what made helping them so rewarding, I realized a few things:

--One of my spiritual gifts is service, explained at this site: "This gift is a practical gift. Those with the gift of service enjoy doing routine tasks around the church regardless of how they effect others. Those with this gift enjoy menial tasks and do them cheerfully."  It's funny, but the older I get the more I enjoy being behind the scenes, and really enjoy seeing the little things that need doing and just being the one to do it.  (Doing the dishes for our SoulKitchen "Conversations" is a good example.)  So how cool is that, to be using a spiritual gift to help my parents?  No wonder it felt so good.

--One of my love languages is Loving Acts of Service.  It's pretty logical that we naturally show love to others in the ways we would most naturally receive it ourselves, so that means by unpacking boxes and helping furniture find homes in the new spaces I was unconsciously Doing Love.  Now, that may not be one of the love languages of my parents, so I can't assume they were feeling all the same warm fuzzies I was, but it just means *I* was feeling all those warm fuzzies while I worked.  I was infused with Love the whole time.  No wonder it felt good.

(I really enjoyed reading the Love Languages book years ago, and have continued to form my own extrapolations from it over the years--one I'm thinking is pretty clear is a correlation between our love languages and our spiritual gifts.  That would make so much sense, and is true for me!  When we serve = we love. Isn't that just how God would plan it?)

--I think humans are all given the urge to bring chaos into order--part of God's mandate to people in Genesis, and a result of the Fall too, that we are always seeking to "conquer" disorder, and that our hearts long for it.  (Sure, some people don't seem to have that urge--part of the Fall too!)  So it felt so satisfying to be working and see such wonderful and immediate fruits to our labors.  Empty dining room feels a little sad and foreign?  A couple hours later, with long-loved furniture in place and familiar dishes and table linens being stowed in their usual places, ta da!  Room that now starts to feel more welcoming and at peace.

Of course, I work to try to reclaim some semblance of order around this tiny house constantly, but it is always even then still in the process of falling into disorder around me--and it's not nearly as fun to have to do the same habitat restoration over and over and over and over.  So it was fun to put something away and see it stay there!  To make something pretty and have it still be pretty two days later!  No wonder it felt good.

--I think I actually am pretty good at finding appropriate and logical "homes" for things around the house.  Keep in mind I have myself downsized twice, and now live in a home where I am constantly having to make choices about where things should be, and changing the order frequently as the way we live shifts over time and seasons.  So it feels easy to think about such things in general, and to have a big empty house with so many cupboards--a dream come true!  Seriously--we would be in the kitchen trying to figure out where to put something big and then more than once would realize there was a whole cupboard we had forgotten about that was clean and ready to receive things--ah, the ecstasy!  No wonder it felt good.

(Mom and Dad, of course you rearrange things where you want, after you have lived in the house a bit and know what you want.  My goal was to make things logical and easy to use and neat and attractive for the moment, while you are in the transition, so you could easily find things and not mind how something looked until you knew what you really wanted to do with it.)

--I joke sometimes about having mild "OCD" tendencies, but it is a wee bit true.  So organizing things, making things neat, matching things, finding logical homes for things--all make me feel happy inside.  I am not joking.  The moment when I realized I could rearrange two high large cupboards in the kitchen so that I could neatly fit all the big Tupperware pieces in one cupboard over the fridge and the "things that cook or warm food that aren't used more than once a year" in one cupboard over the stove (you see--the cooking things all together in the cupboard over the appliance that cooks?!)  I literally was giddy with joy.  You are welcome to laugh at me.  But it felt REALLY good.

(Parents, you are welcome to move anything in the kitchen to where it best suits you.  But if you go mixing up those two cupboards, just don't tell me. ; )

So, there you have it.  A trip most rewarding in so many ways.  I am so thankful that my Dear Husband let me go and be with my parents and sister's family and help out for a few days. 

Were you wondering what I did with my family during that time?  Well,  my dear Becky hosted my kids for a two-day homeschool "camp" the first couple of days I was gone. . .

Smiley keeping Becky's husband Dan company while he works on that Sunday's sermon  

. . . and then DH worked from home a couple of days, so he could get me to and from the airport.  Before I left I cooked up a whole fridge of food, so they would never be in want, and I don't think they actually missed me. 

But the kids did almost knock me over with their beaming faces and running hugs when they saw me get off the escalator by the baggage claim at the airport.  So, even if I was not missed, they were happy to see me again. : )

All in all, a great week.