No Place Like Home

_____________________________________

"If somehow we can show our children that the work we do together to improve/ maintain our home is personally satisfying as well as fun and productive, it will give them a lifelong sense of purpose to create their own perfect homesteads one day."

_______________________________

The view from our front porch this morning is heavenly with the windows cracked a bit letting in sounds of songbirds and roosters along with the wind through the trees and a hint of rain. The freshly mown grass is a lush green carpet set off by several loads of new rock on the lane. The image is breathtaking in a simple, natural way. My husband left this morning to pick up two of our boys from a Saturday sleepover and we have today and tomorrow to spend together as a family. I want to take some video footage of the boys and compile it into a movie to send to my husband after he leaves for National Guard duty in Iraq next month.

We will be working on the interior of the front porch for the next few days putting in some insulation in the walls, installing the soffit ceiling, putting in electrical for lights/switches/outlets, and finally putting up the white bead-board paneling to finish it off. Anticipating the final product is exciting and although the floors need finished yet, we can already see the serene setting vividly in our minds. Another coat of porch paint and a nice grass-made area rug should finish off the floor nicely until we can tile/carpet it as we’d like in another year or so.

I am thinking of making some rocking chair covers to tie on the back and seat of each chair made of the same black/cream toile fabric I used on the kitchen window treatments. I’m not certain I have enough leftover, but I know where to get more and how to treat the fabric to be stain and water-resistant! I know that our design and implementation of this front porch/mudroom/garden room is nearly complete and I’m almost giddy with anticipation to see the finished product. As I sit here and contemplate the finished walls, it occurs to me that perhaps we should use the same siding we have on the house to finish the inside of the porch to give it a more cohesive look with the result of the house. It would make the transition seamless as if it was designed this way from the beginning rather than added on later. Maybe it’s a good thing our local home improvement store was out of the bead-board paneling anyway.

Every enhancement we make to our home and farm provides more peace, refuge, and strength. Undoubtedly, our sanctuary will prove invaluable during the next year with pieces of our entire family evident in the walls, trees, flowers, prairie grass, and even our two mama cows (Mamie and Ellie) and the baby calf (Dinky). If somehow we can show our children that the work we do together to improve/ maintain our home is personally satisfying as well as fun and productive, it will give them a lifelong sense of purpose to create their own perfect homesteads one day. The memories we are making will help sustain me through the inevitable loneliness that will occur in the months to come with “daddy” away.

At least with this deployment, we know what to expect and how we will get along so that makes the preparation time more productive. We can easily target the things we know we’ll need to get current with farm implement and vehicle maintenance. About a month ago, we sold some cattle and returned the old bull to his owner (my brother-in-law), so the few cows we have now are easy to manage. The updates we’ve made to the inside of our home over the last year with new flooring and carpet throughout, a new roof, dishwasher, microwave hood, and high-efficiency washer mean those things are handled and provide a certain sense of security. Things like fixing a water leak in an old hydrant and installing a new hydrant inside the machine shed are the last few items left for farm maintenance.

In retrospect, we have been preparing for a possible deployment for some time, really, knowing that we can’t afford the luxury of putting off anything with the threat of deployment ever lingering. The valuable three years I spent writing and being a full-time mom provided a healing sabbatical for my over-taxed soul, which has been replenished with inner-peace and strength to appreciate the wonderful family and life that we have built together. It’s not that I didn’t realize these things before; it’s just that I allowed life’s daily grind to erode my energies and desires until there was nothing left of me. I learned how to govern the elements of my life and stop allowing those things to rule me.

There’s no real magic in doing this, it just takes practice to respect your time/energy like precious jewels that shouldn’t be dolled out like candy to anyone who screams for a handout. So often, we yield to the screamers because we just want them to go away and giving in can seem like the easiest solution. It takes time for the screamers to adapt to your new life-management techniques, but they will learn if they want to get something from you. They will learn that what triggers your attention is no longer just loud banter but substance and priorities. Eventually, they may go to another person to get what they want and, perhaps, that’s just as well if your priorities do not line up with theirs.

If, indeed, preparation is half the battle, we will be ready to face the coming months with confidence during daddy’s deployment. My husband can feel satisfied and relieved that we are able to man the home front while he’s away until the day he can return to the place Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz refers to as, “There’s no place like home!”