Holliday-Cary House, N. College St., Auburn, Lee County, Alabama
1939
Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress "Carnegie Architecture of the South."
This morning when I heard the soothing NPR broadcaster tell me that today was May 17th, a light went off in my brain. May 17th...why is that date ringing a bell? Why is it important?
Looking through my old calenders didn't tell me much about why I would remember May 17th but it was revealing in other ways.
May 17th, 2009, was the day I arrived in Portland* to start an internship, live with my parents, be away from D$ for a few months and start the nitty gritty planning for my upcoming wedding.
May 17th, 2010, was the day after I graduated from my Masters Program and the day before we picked up the Budget Truck to fill with our belongings and drive across the country to a new life.
Suffice it to say, the last few Mays have been big transitions. It's almost odd that this May is so normal. I feel like, well, the weather is changing drastically, why isn't my life? At least that was my first thought.
Then I realized that we are already planning for more transitions. We have been talking about buying a house. We have tentative baby plans (not soon so just calm down over there). Sunday we went to Open Houses and we talked about meeting with a lender, "just in case." Home-buying felt like it was on the horizon.
Now I think maybe we aren't ready. Maybe we should wait. Maybe we should take time to appreciate the fact that we aren't in a transition right now. I want to make sure that D and I are living in the present instead of rushing forward to the future. I want us to enjoy the summer - go away on weekends, stay in on weekends, sleep late, drink wine at 2 pm, enjoy each other and our life - before we leap ahead to the next thing.
The thing is...can I stay still for a while?
*Having flown into Seattle the night before, so it can't be that I remember it because I flew that day
BAYBEEZ!!!!
ReplyDeleteHa. Kidding. ;)
You guys just gotta do what feels right for you at the time. (And it seems to me that the process of finding the right house, at the right price, in the right place can be a process of sitting still for quite some time, unless you get lucky! Or maybe that's just the UK.)
That said, in retrospect we had about 18 months or so of stillness in our relationship, just after we got married, and were in that lovely cottage out in the middle of Nowheresville, UK. At times during that period I was champing at the bit to get a move on (especially on the babies front - what can I say, this thing has been a long while coming), but now I am grateful that we did not, that we had that time to be just us together, settling into our marriage, with the biggest transition to deal with for much of that time being getting used to being owned by a cat.