The plastic shutters riveted onto our house catch my eye as I walk across our front yard. Some are still green. Others have turned brown. They were put there purely for looks. Flimsy window-dressing on the faded yellow siding of a thirty-year-old manufactured house, the shutters are a sad testament to the folly of “form over function.”
To qualify for a loan, we paid someone to bolt the house to the ground so it wouldn’t blow away in a tornado. In order to get an appraisal, we tore out carpet, installed kitchen cabinets, and repainted half the rooms. We worked like dogs on the grounds, chopping through layers of weeds to unearth long lost gardens. The swimming pool was toast so Lyle suggested we fill it in and grow vegetables.
We celebrated our closing with champagne. The next day we bought a life-sized zebra made of Mexican milk cans, named him Spot and stood him between two clumps of Pampas grass in the front yard. We slept in the house for the first time the day after Christmas, and threw a big party a week later on the first day of 2010.
The photo album on the table inside the front door features pictures of our friends from that first New Year’s Day party. Neighbor Joe quipped that we were making it easy for the FBI. Since then, we’ve thrown countless parties and potlucks. Each time someone new shows up, we take their picture with Spot and paste it in the album. The most recent photo brought the tally to 199.
Over the years, we’ve planted fruit trees, peonies, and roses, plugged mushroom logs, put in a fig and some scuppernongs, cut down the poplars, clawed the honeysuckle from the fence, and repainted the zebra. Inside, the new floors are already showing wear. The kitchen linoleum wears a scar from the day they installed the new gas stove, and a tiny cut for every time we’ve dropped a knife. The cupboards are well stocked, there’s home baked bread on the counter, and the smell of fried okra and cut roses mingle in the air.
Objectively this is not a pretty house, and the furnishings aren’t anything to write home about. Neither Bob nor I are very interested in home decorating beyond framed art, fresh flowers, and curtains to soften the light as it enters the house. Nearly everything here is second hand. Dana gave us her comfy couch and chair, Matt gave Bob his father’s big desk, and we bought mine at a thrift store. Scott left us tables and chairs and I found my bedroom dresser and mirror for free at the recycle center.
It keeps us cool and dry in the summer, warm in the winter, and gives us somewhere to entertain. This is where we come for a cold drink and a shower, for a lay in the hammock on the back porch. It’s where we store our clothes, where we read and write, where we come to get away from the world. Under this roof, we’ve made tough decisions and comforted each other after apocalyptic nightmares. It feels like home.
This house is not our home because we fell in love with it, or because it’s what we’ve been looking for all our lives, or because it was in the family for a generation or two. I rarely notice the shutters. I’m usually looking for flowers, or weeds, or branches to trim. Inside, I see the yard from behind windows; vinca and roses from the kitchen sink, sunsets and figs from the bedroom, the front yard with the zebra from my desk. It’s our home because of the work we’ve put into it, the meals we’ve eaten here, and the laughter and tears we’ve shared with friends. It’s our home because it’s where we sleep and dream.
