Home Sweet Home

I was thinking today how, if I ever had to, except to go Home, home, how I'd ever leave this place.

Oh, I know houses can be rebuilt, and it's not the  house, exactly I'm talking about. Even though I took a Queen Anne floor plan, wiped it out and did my own floor plan - one that we could afford in size - it still isn't the house itself.

It's what's made it a home during the last twenty-eight years.

For instances we have my great-great- (and maybe one more great) grandmother's rosebush in the yard. My grandmother passed it on down to me. We also have a variety of bushes from my mother's, Husband's mother's and grandmother's yards.

Husband sketched a blue bird nest with babies in it, nestled in a tree branch, with mama bird flying in to feed them, right above the door coming into our bedroom.

Some of the tiles above my cook stove were sketched and fired by Husband, depicting my favorite childhood story. I have Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox and the Tar Baby. My granddaddy used to tell me that story while I followed him in the garden: sunlight filtering through the high corn stalks with early morning light while he picked beans.

Each stair on the staircase is slightly worn and of a different color as we have traipsed up and down them a zillion times. For if I need something and I was downstairs, it was upstairs, and if I was upstairs it was, of course, downstairs.

The window blinds in our bedroom have a slight bend and tiny holes at the bottom of one of the slats. That's where I caught Daughter standing, biting on it, when she was trying to cut a tooth.

And inside the pantry wall are marks. Daughter was "this tall" at two, "this tall" at six, "this tall" at nine, "this tall" at thirteen, "this tall" at seventeen, "this tall" at twenty-one and now, "this tall" - the same as me.

How could I say good-bye that all that?

I am a rich woman, who doesn't wish to lose her treasures.

Art Made Perfect

We have a framed print hanging on the first landing in our foyer. It's one I have always liked from the moment I saw it. When I saw it; I knew I had to have it.

It is slim and long, just right for the space.

The name of the painting is "Posting a Letter" and was painted by Albert Ludovici, 1850-1932.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Imagine how impressed I was day before yesterday when the painting was suddenly improved.

Husband came in the kitchen with a more than usual perplexed look on his face. "Have you ever noticed - " he started. "Never mind. It's a visual. Come with me."

He took me to stand at the stairs and look up at the painting. Imagine my surprise when I saw a foggy, white, harvest moon shimmering up in the middle of the painting's sky.

It was beautiful.

Husband said, "I thought to myself 'how could I have never noticed that beautiful moon in the painting before?' ." (We've had it over 25 years). "It's so perfect."

Then he had gone to stand in front of the painting to get a better look, and the moon disappeared.

It was light from the sun, somehow casting a perfect moon through one of our windows.

We don't think it had ever done that before.

And let me tell you, the harvest moon had all the darks and  lights you can see on the moon when it is large and bright.

We stood there and watched it move slowly across the painted sky.

Just like a real moon.

And now, of course, when I look at "Posting a Letter", something seems to be missing from it. That dreamy, hazy, milky harvest moon made the painting perfect.

Life imitating art.

Or was it the other way 'round?