First Home

I’m all giddy. Squirming in my seat.

There. There’s the water tower. And here’s the exit. Do you suppose the Dairy Barn is still there? It’s been almost 40 years. Is that where I picked up Puppy on my way to work that morning?

Poor little stray. Sweet little dog.

I’m not sure I recognize much of anything else, though. I think the restaurant’s gone. Remember how we stopped there for dinner when we got home from our honeymoon? Look! There’s our grocery store.

Wait! Turn around. Turn here.

Stop! Back up.

I can’t breathe.

There it is!

A satellite dish! Remember the little portable black and white TV with the rabbit years that sat on my great-grandmother’s cedar chest?

Remember how you’d bought four rooms of furniture for $400, and how Jim slept on that black vinyl fold-down couch when he spent the night? He and the whole couch went over with a crash at two in the morning?

I wonder if they ever fixed the bathroom. I remember the pink fixtures and pink tile, but we couldn’t use the tub because the wall was crumbling. The landlord just couldn’t get around to fix it. And then there was the night I came out of the basement shower and saw that big moth flying around, only it was a bat, and I never took a shower after dusk again. Knowing now what we didn’t know then… I wonder if it ever came upstairs, ever flew around our room at night.

They’ve put in new windows. Sometimes I think I dream of that attic. We could have had so much fun fixing that place up. Remember how we had to dig the mail off the floor of the closet? Is the mail slot still there? Yup, there it is.

I wish I could remember more.

Remember how I never did the dishes after supper? They could always wait until after I got home from work the next day.

Remember the night you left the house because you were so mad about something at work? You drove all the way to Toledo and stopped at some restaurant to eat and then drove back home. I was hysterical wondering what horrible thing happened.

Remember all the flowers and those crazy cucumbers and how wild they went in that space where they said there used to be a chicken house and how much fun it was to rake leaves together?

Those were good times.

I wish they hadn’t repainted. I loved that pink garage and all the pink trim on the house.

Sigh…

It’s late. I guess we should go. We both have to get up early, and we won’t be home for a couple hours yet. Remember how we used to drive it all the time? We’d clean house early Saturday morning, then head to your folks (our now house), and stay as late as we possibly could on Sunday. The trip didn’t seem so long then.

I still can’t get over how God brought us together.

Sigh again…

I love you.