I slept all of two hours last night. Wrestling with the pillow, I turned from side to side. Nothing worked. I was grateful for morning to come. My dreams were a jumble, a collection of scenes that didn’t make sense. After cereal and tea, I sat down for some silence. Then I heard a rap on the chimney. Didn’t know what it was. Ten minutes later I heard something else on the deck. A squirrel had made its appearance. I went to shoo it off, but it had already disappeared. Squirrels do lots of damage to a cedar house. The downy woodpecker has pecked out a hole in the siding near my bedroom. That will have to be repaired. It’s always something. The tree man is coming tomorrow to take down 2 trees endangering my neighbor’s yard.

Even so, I sat back down and thanked the house for sheltering me for almost 38 years now. It is the base for my son and I to live lives that are sometimes difficult. The house has good bones and we are careful to respect it.

There are cracks in the garage floor where the house has settled. Rob’s bedroom door is contrary about closing and the driveway needs repair as well. But this is an open-plan house that lets in the light.

We have paid to have landscaping plans drawn up and implemented over the years. At some point trees get too big and have to be cut down. Since we live on a creek, the ground is eroding and some trees fall into it from time to time. But the tree being cut down tomorrow was the victim of some sort of beetle.

Having said all that, I don’t think you want me to describe what the last 38 years have done to me! The house has fared much better, methinks.

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Today I will be getting out for a wee bit, then the rest of the day will be spent at leisure. There are some things to be said for getting older. Leisure invites one to explore the new frontier of silence. Most people overlook it in favor of noise.

Vicki Woodyard