When Suzannah and I drove to Puyallup this afternoon for her friend Sam’s birthday party (a showing of the Lego Movie, which I actually found rather whimsical), I pointed at the snow-capped mountains not so very far away and wondered if we’d actually have any more snow here this year. When we emerged from the movie theater hours later, our little Honda Civic was covered in a thick layer of wet snow. I opened the trunk to look for our scraper, but all I found were Matt’s hiking poles. I used one of our canvas shopping bags to brush our windows clear before beginning the 30-minute drive home. It’s funny; an evening of wetly falling snow in Montana would be just another almost-spring evening, but here it makes me tense enough that I’m deeply happy to arrive safely back at home and spend the evening here. Usually we find ourselves out on Saturday afternoons, eating out for dinner, but tonight I was more than content to hunker down in our cozy little house, get the kids bathed early, and eat plates of homemade broccoli-and-tofu stir-fry while we watched the backyard fill up with snow.
This morning I curled up on our couch with my book and a mug of coffee and gazed dreamily out the window, up our quiet little street. And I thought in that moment that I can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else. Sometimes I think I’m supposed to want us to move up, somehow, to aspire to five bedrooms and a bigger garage, but when I look at the rooms in our home I always find myself imagining the ways in which they will continue to evolve as our family does. It’s not really about the house, though. It’s about the way I love our quiet neighborhood in this little suburb. The way we can walk to Starbucks or down to the shore of Puget Sound, the silence in the winter, the sound of lawn mowers and children’s giggles in the summer. Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to move away and then drive through these streets, to see the path through the woods that leads to the park or to the school, to remember walking with my newborn son and my preschooler nearly every day -- to the playground, and then to Starbucks for hot chocolate afterwards. To remember walking my children home from school. My Saturday morning or spring and summer evening jogs. I think, honestly, that my heart would break a bit -- to remember this place from somewhere else. Maybe that’s how I know I’m home right now.
We’re planning a mini-vacation soon; nothing extravagant, but a little family getaway. Two nights. Suzannah has been packed for days. When we fly to Minnesota for ten days she gets to pack a single carry-on that she carries all by herself, but we tell her we’re leaving for a weekend and she packs four times as much -- mostly books, from what I can tell. This is the girl who has been waking up extra early in the mornings, hustling through breakfast and brushing teeth, just so she can have a little extra time to read in her room before we go to school.
For the last week, Isaac has been reading “The Monster at the End of This Book” on our way to and from school. He’s so earnest about it -- “YOU TURNED THE PAGE!” and “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO ME” and “I’m so embarrassed.” It fills me with so much pure delight I could burst.
It is the weekend after the first week of second semester, which means I have no grading to do tomorrow. Yesterday morning I made all the copies I’ll need for next week, which means that tomorrow I will pick up some pho on my way home from church, eat it while I read a book, and sink into a nap on the couch in the soft gray light of the afternoon while snow or rain falls just on the other side of the window. Isaac will nap at the same time because he usually does still nap on Sundays, and Suzannah will read books in her room. Next weekend we’ll try something new, we’ll explore a place we’ve never been to, we’ll sleep in a hotel room, and we’ll make memories that stand out from our ordinary weekend routines. Tonight, though, I’m happy to curl up right where I’m at.
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