A House Well Filled...

We moved in to our little farmhouse in the third week of February, a year to the day when we nervously dropped off our carefully crafted offer for the place. Now, I'm sure that the staff of The Georgia Trust were giddy that someone had finally taken some interest in the dilapidated farm. It had been for sale for many years. I was sick with worry that our very low offer would be summarily dismissed. What if there were multiple offers? What if they did not like our restoration plans? So much fretting and so much worry. In another four months, after appallingly low appraisals and impossible bank negotiations, it was ours. I'd like to say they handed us the keys at closing but there was just an old combination padlock on the door. If you were too lazy to take the time to unlock it, you could always climb in through a broken window. I'm not sure that the side door even closed all of the way.

Then followed the seven long and trying months of contractors and additional expenses and missed deadlines. We've let all of that go now. A wound well-healed at last.

In the six or seven months we have lived on the farm, I think we've feathered it pretty well. We had been collecting furniture, quilts, oil lamps- well, you name it- since our offer was accepted. And somehow it all fit. The samplers hang next to 'Alma's' chair. The little rocker warms itself by the fireplace. The plantation desks await their next tasks. To us, it looks like we had imagined. It's how we thought it deserved to look, having offered shelter to a family for 170 years.

It's September. And now that the Walnut and Mulberry trees are fading to yellow, now that the sun is traveling lower through the sky and is rising later and setting sooner, now that Summer is waning and Autumn is waxing, there seems to be a bit more time to sit on the porch and recollect all we have been through. The last rays of sunshine get caught in the neighbor's Oak tree each evening. K. likes to sit on the front steps for the show. I light the oil lamps as the day dissolves completely to blue-gray dusk. The birds head to the treetops, the rabbits make blurred circles as they chase one another through the pasture, the deer graze contentedly across the road. The whole place seems to stretch and issue a contented sigh.

This well-filled house is a home again.