You know how you get used to your home and don't really see the little things like the grimy spot on the door where you always push it shut, or the outdated window blinds that you never liked but never got around to replacing, or the way the grout in the tile floor is darker in the high-traffic spots?
So we have a list of things to clean, fix, upgrade, or replace. A ton of decisions to make about paint brands, carpet color, hardware fixtures.
Friends (and even salespeople) have expressed sympathy that we're doing all this work and making the house so nice just to leave it. Some say, "I'll bet you wish you'd done this a long time ago so that you could enjoy it."
I don't.
I've screwed up a lot of things in my life (possibly including my children; that jury is still out), but I've done one thing right.
I've lived in this house with my family just the way I wanted to.
Take, for example, the big-ticket item on that list of upgrades: replacing the carpeting. No surprise there—the carpet wasn't in great shape when we moved in 19 years ago. We intentionally chose not to replace it because we wanted our kids to be able to run in and out and do projects and have friends over without anybody worrying about dirt tracked in or Play-Doh mishaps. We wanted to be able to have the youth group over for movie nights without worrying about Coke spills or popcorn crushed into the carpet. We wanted to build a sukkah in the backyard and celebrate the feast of tabernacles with other families and not be concerned about tracking in leaves from the grapevines festooning the booth.
I've been far from a perfect parent, youth leader, or hostess. But I'm pretty sure I never yelled at anybody about staining the carpet. (And now I'm thinking about all our good deeds being as filthy rags, and realizing how fitting it is that my one claim to virtue is a dirty carpet.)
I've been far from a perfect parent, youth leader, or hostess. But I'm pretty sure I never yelled at anybody about staining the carpet. (And now I'm thinking about all our good deeds being as filthy rags, and realizing how fitting it is that my one claim to virtue is a dirty carpet.)
I've thoroughly enjoyed this house. I'm not always good at appreciating the things I see every day, but more time than I can count, I've sat on the couch, looked around, and said, "I love this house." This has been my dream house, and I'm fairly sure I'll never live in one I like better.
But that doesn't mean I'm sad to let it go. (Although I'm seriously nostalgic, as you can maybe tell from this post.)
This house is my paper nautilus.
I was reading Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift from the Sea when we were still deciding about going nomad. She expresses it beautifully:
There are in the beach-world certain rare creatures, the "Argonauta" (Paper Nautilus), who are not fastened to their shell at all. It is actually a cradle for the young, held in the arms of the mother argonaut who floats with it to the surface, where the eggs hatch and the young swim away. Then the mother argonaut leaves her shell and starts another life.
I love that imagery, don't you? And it strikes me as just the right way to appreciate the beauty of one season of life—and the shell that embraced that season—while still recognizing it as just that: only one season of life.
So we're polishing our beautiful nautilus shell, grateful that it was ours for a season, anticipating letting the last of our young swim away and then moving on ourselves. Who knows what's waiting out there in the wide ocean?
- The paper nautilus is really an octopus, not a nautilus. (Not a very attractive one, either, to my mind, which is why I'm focusing on comparing our house with the shell rather than myself with creature living inside the shell.)
- It most likely got its Latin name, Argonauta, because the discoverers thought it used flaps on its arms as sails, as in the engraving above, and so named it after the ship Argo sailed by Jason and the Argonauts of Greek mythology. Here's my favorite quote about that:
When and where this picturesque idea originated I am unable to discover. It dates far back beyond the range of history; for Aristotle mentions it, and, unfortunately, sanctioned it. With the weight of his honoured name in its favour, this fallacy has maintained its place in popular belief, even to our own times; for the mantle of the great father of natural history, who was generally so marvellously correct, fell on none of his successors; Pliny, and Ælian, and the tribe of compilers who succeeded them, having been more concerned to make their histories sensational than to verify their statements.
Yours for unsensationalized natural history,
~ Jane
