Home

The robin and I, we watch each other through panes of glass as I hang laundry in the closet, both baring bellies full. Spring on our minds as we nest for our little ones--she, doubtless searching for twigs and string and nest-making materials, while I spend my day washing baby clothes and admiring his little outfits.

This place has become home quickly. I live in a place of hills and airplanes, bustling suburbia and quiet neighborhood. Five months now in the Magnolia homeplace and gratitude's growing more and more.

Just minutes from my front door are the overpasses I love to watch the sunset from--busy, and bustling. But just down the ramp and to the right one can find a quiet corner in the back of the shopping center's parking lot, park the car, wait for a prescription and listen to songs and simply cry tears of gratitude.

I rode these very roads for years and now I've married my love and settled down right down the street from the old church building that I frequented through my college years.

And this town, it contains me most days. Everything I need is within a circle of miles, even the Goodwill thrift store I prayed would be close. On occasion I venture out to the busy roads and through toll plazas to buy wild salmon in one city or visit the surgeon with Aaron in the next town, or see the midwives up the road a bit.

A few minutes from my front door the world rushes by, northern Virginians and doubtless the D.C. commuters too. Here, a few minutes takes me from the rougher section of town to places of extravagance. Our neighborhood finds itself tucked away from the busyness and noise with the reminders of outside civilization the loud, roaring, window shaking airplanes that occasionally pass by, or the whirring sirens on the road that passes by.

We have learned to love this neighborhood and the neighbors around us in a simple, observant sort of way. To our left lives Gary, a talkative fellow whose first conversation with me was marked by his curious efforts to see if he had raccoons living in his crawlspace. Gary is always up for conversation it seems, whether about the raccoons, or the ongoing repairs from the fire in his home on Thanksgiving day, or making sure I am taking my prenatal vitamins.

To the right lives Darcy, and her two teenaged daughters. She has a July baby too, but he is old now.  Gary met us, while my quest over to Darcy's home, hot cocoa (a belated Christmas gift) was occasioned by a delivery made to her home instead of ours when I didn't answer the door one day. She seems to know all that goes on in the neighborhood, or so Aaron tells me.

This place has become home in the five months we've lived here. And already the home bears marks of many memories; the floor I slipped on during a snowball fight, the cracked floorboards from dishwasher accidents to plumbing mishaps, the broken piece of countertop from a bit too hasty of a moment in the kitchen. For all these five months and whatever more years these walls hold, I am grateful.