Things Inherited

With the bursting of spring -- sun beaming and snow gone melted -- at least for a few days last week, I ran early and wild in the backyard. It's not like we live in the country or have a particularly big yard. We live under the shadow of the Minneapolis skyline. But when a house is over half a century old you've got to believe there is history to be hunted, treasure to be found, and counted as inheritance.

There are stories living on every blade of grass. Each inch touched at one time or another by Grandma's hands working hard to care for her family, Grandpa's feet building a place called home, the good man's aunts and uncle as they played and grew -- we can only imagine what life was like here in this once new little home filled to the brim with life. And when I am quiet, and still, and all a listening ear I can almost hear it, see it. Echoes.

And I want nothing more than to make our own echoes and adventures here.

I have inherited...

The Phone Chair

Hours upon hours of kids and teens sitting, talking to friends on the corded phone, tethered to the kitchen wall. And it makes me feel both old and nostalgic to think of those long ago days. 

A pig full of matchboxes

Grandma and Grandpa loved to travel and everywhere they went saved a matchbox.
Each is dated. And have so many stories to tell. 

A Whimsical Spring 

"Recipes" Handwritten

An Owl Wind Chime

An Empty Birdhouse

One Forgotten Clothes Pin
and a garden shed with beautifully peeling paint

A Bucket Full of Shells
found in the shed...how long and for why?

A Purington Brick 
dug from the garden

And..a rusty windmill that sure has weathered some storms

The child in me lives on. In my younger years I lived barefoot through the summer days, collected army worms and believed our fenced-in backyard was on the edge of a forgotten land. Bridge to Terabithia all the way. I climbed the trees. Lived in the trees, and rode my bike down the dirt road at least twice a day to my bestie's house.

I feel connected to this place. Grafted on to roots already grown deep and rugged. Tied to the past - a family I was not born to but was loved in all the way; and pulled into the future with oozing joy - anticipating a growing family, children not always born of my womb but loved in all the way and further.

Our home as a bridge between time.

And maybe there is something intimate about this place and my head over heels love for it as I no longer have grandparents here on earth. I cherish the moments in these walls with history, to know and learn and share stories with littles who will play and run and sleep and giggle here, just like those who came before. And to bathe this place in love -- for family, friends made family, strangers made friends, and our great God -- and grace. Piles of grace.

So after several years of living in apartments with no yard or land to call my own, I am cherishing every second of the sun, every inch of the dirt, and every aching muscle of work.