PHOTOS: Mary van Balen
While helping me clean my old house, a friend asked if I would miss it when I moved. There are plenty of things I will not miss: non-stop noisy traffic, a one-person kitchen that managed to hold four or five people when the children and I were baking or we hosted a party, and a narrow hallway with four doors that all opened into each other. Of course, all homes have drawbacks.
As I stopped cleaning for a moment and considered her question, a number of thoughts came to mind. The bedroom walls I was washing had been decorated with a glow-in-the-dark moon, Monet, dinosaur, and Einstein posters, as well as awards and original art. The décor changed as the rooms occupants matured from infants and toddlers to home only on breaks college students. The walls had heard secrets and private tears. The other upstairs bedroom held its share of secrets and memories, too.
True, every room in the house was witness to the lives of a family of five as they lived, loved, and grew, but so was I. The memories are mine to treasure no matter where I make my home. They reside in my heart and mind, and do not depend on a particular location to survive. However, some things will remain in the place I am leaving, and I will miss them.
For over twenty years, when looking out the window over the kitchen sink, I saw a deep yard filled with trees and a gurgling creek that separated our place from a small woods full of wildlife. Below the dining room window in the front of the house is an herb garden bordered with bushy lavender and a crumbling sandstone wall. Whenever I walked past the plants, I ran my hands over its leaves as I passed by, releasing a sweet pungent fragrance that filled the air and lingered on my fingers.
There are abundant spring flowers, so lush and varied that an artist friend who lived above a downtown shop once shared his envy: I would love to have a garden like yours: a bit wild and colorful like an impressionistic painting.
Blue bachelor buttons, lavender, flowering sage, red and orange poppies, deep magenta peonies, purple flocks, pinks, chives, yellow yarrow, and purple larkspur never again look as lovely as they do after late spring rains and cool nights. I will miss them along with Christmas ferns that spread out near my small office, thick, and deep green, all from a single plant given to a daughter on the occasion of her first communion.
These are the things I cannot take with me; gifts that have blessed me and fed my soul for years. I bequeath these grace-full bits of creation to those who move into this place, whomever they will be. May they be open to wonder and joy so freely given.
© 2010 Mary van Balen
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