This decision to continue to wait, however, doesn't keep me from dreaming! I'm sure that I will probably never own my dream house-thanks mostly to the crazy real estate prices in the Lower Mainland-but I know what I would love to have if I did! I remember drawing floor plans for my dream house when I was in middle school. I would use up all the graph paper that my mother bought me and draw and redraw the perfect floor plan. My idea of the perfect house changed from week to week, depending on what was important to me at that stage of my adolescent existence. Fifteen years later, I have some pretty strong ideas of what I would love to have.
My dream house begins on the outside. It has a small front yard, because my kids probably wouldn't be playing in the front yard anyway. I would be too afraid of them being hit by cars. That is what the fenced in back yard is for, right? I would have a nice little brick walkway leading up to my wide, wrap-around front porch. I would want my house to be yellow. Not lemony yellow or sunshine yellow, but some soft, muted shade that is cheery but not annoyingly so. It would have lots of windows to let in the natural light. I would be able to sit out on the big porch on warm summer evenings talking with my girlfriends, or simply reading a book. It would have white shutters and trim. Maybe something a bit like this, but with a normal colored roof.
Upon entering the living room, you would see the kitchen. My kitchen would be huge! I love too cook when I have the time and the right amount of space. There would be many cupboards, enough to hide every appliance so that my counters could be clear. Of course there would be an island in the middle. The countertops would be granite, the appliances stainless steel. Hey, since it is my dream house, why not throw in a double oven! Wouldn't that be handy when I'm getting that big Thanksgiving dinner ready? It would be clean, crisp...white cabinets, but not the cheap 80s kind that you find in so many basement suites. They would be real wood, not fabricated wood. I have always loved the hanging pot rack, so of course there would be one directly above the island.
The living room would be comfy couches, a warm cozy fireplace, and an invitation to sit and chat, read a book, or just relax. The hardwood floor would have a lovely warm rug thrown across it to keep feet warm in the winter, and the tall windows would allow as much light to stream in as possible on a cool, dreary winter day.
Upstairs you would find the bedrooms. We would have at least four. I'm hoping that we'll someday have at least two kids and you always need a guest bedroom! Of course there would be a bathroom for the kids, but the bathroom that I truly dream of is the master suite! I would have one of those beautiful tile showers with the eight shower head nozzles and I would have a separate jacuzzi bathtub. Since moving into our current basement suite that does not have a bathtub at all, I have realized the importance of being able to soak my cares away in a warm, bubbly bath. I dream of the day I will be able to do that whenever I want. It would be clean lines, and again in the bathrooms you would find cool, crisp countertops.
I know that this "dream house" will probably never exist for me. In fact, I'm quite sure that some day when we get into our own home I won't even want this dream house that I drew and redrew so many times in my youth. Our home probably won't always be clean. There might be toys strewn about and I will not always put a gourmet dinner on the table. Friends will stop by and I will be embarrassed at how messy my home is, but once we sit down on the non-designer couches and begin to catch up I will forget all about the laundry that is waiting to be done and the fact that my floors aren't gleaming cherry hardwood, but rather they are old carpet that needs to be cleaned again.
When my kids run in the door after another day of school and I prep their snack of carrot sticks and juice-I WILL be a health conscious mom, after all-and we sit down at the kitchen table in my less than immaculate kitchen with Formica countertops and linoleum flooring, I won't worry about the fact that dinner is not cooking in my stainless steel double ovens, but rather I will be thankful that I already threw it in the Slow Cooker hours before so that I now have uninterrupted time to hear about my childrens' days.
When our guests come to visit, they might end up sleeping on the guest bed that we have managed to wedge into the office, but I'm sure they won't mind...I have never minded when visiting other people. We will be happy to have them because it means that dear friends or family have taken time out of their schedules to be with us, and we will cherish those late nights of laughter and our guests will be so tired by the time they head to bed that they won't even notice that they are listening to the hum of the computer as they drift into slumber.
We might even have to share a bathroom with our children! I'm sure that will mean rushed mornings as we try to get everyone through the shower, with brushed teeth and hair combed before we have to rush out the door. I probably won't even have much time for those baths that I dream of...but I will still insist on a bathtub, even if it isn't a jacuzzi one!
My dream house is starting to sound more and more like the house I grew up in. It was a house full of so much love that you never wondered if someone cared about you. It was a house in which all of my friends felt comfortable calling my mother "Mom" and we kids felt free to play and roughhouse, we weren't afraid we would break something. It wasn't always clean, but there was always a lot of laughter. We didn't always have the latest gadgets, but we always had time for each other and we never went hungry, or felt alone.
There were many fights for the single bathroom in a house of three girls, a boy, and my two parents. I'm not sure how my mom ever managed a moment of peace...now I know why she stayed up so late every night. It was her time for quiet. We often interrupted it to cry about our latest problem or to ask advice on whether we should stay on the basketball team or not. I was always welcome to get a big "daddykins" hug from my father, or to interrupt my mother when she was in the middle of something. We were their most important chore.
Family dinners were our best times. We didn't have a separate dining room. I know my mother dreamed about having one, and I'm so happy that she has her "dream house" now, but I never missed having a separate room for the table. Our table fit right in our kitchen and it was big enough for our family of six to sit around many nights. We always gathered around it for the Sunday morning breakfast of eggs and bacon and we lingered long after our meals were finished. I remember laughing so hard that I spit milk...out of my nose...more than once! I remember having serious conversations around that table, I remember being chastised by my father for spinning around on the chairs and sitting there long after the food had become cold because I refused to finish everything that was on my plate.
I remember family birthday parties when our living room was jammed to the gills with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Most of the time I couldn't hear myself think but those were the moments when I was often the most happy.
I didn't have my own bedroom until I was in high school and my sister left for college, therefore freeing her bedroom up for me. I thought it was such a horrible thing to have to share a room with my sister, and before my big sister's room was built to share a room with my TWO sisters! As I look back though, I realize that having my own room from the start would have forced me to miss out on whispered stories late into the night. I would have missed out on the big fight which ended with my little sister and I splitting the middle of our room with a strip of duct tape, only to end up crossing over to each other's side mere hours later. I would have missed out my mom yelling, "Girls, be quiet!" every single night-we always wondered how she could know that we were talking, we thought we were so quiet! I would not have had the wonderful experience of army-crawling across the kitchen floor with my sisters so that we could catch a tiny glimpse of the television show that my parents were watching on our one family tv after our bed time.
Yes, the more I think of it, the more I hope that my future home is much like the home that I grew up in. I hope that it is full of love and laughter. I hope that Kevin and I have children that are not afraid to talk to us, anytime and anywhere. I hope that our childrens' friends will feel comfortable being in our home and that it is a safe place for them in a sometimes unsafe world. I hope that people will feel the presence of God when they enter our home and they will leave feeling full of joy and that they have spent time with people that love God. I hope that people will overlook messy bedrooms, a bathroom whose countertop is spackled with toothpaste and a kitchen in which the countertops are not quite gleaming perfection.
My dream house will be wherever Kev and I end up living, because that will be my home. In fact, I think that we are already there. Even if I don't have a bathtub!
Makes me feel better about the condition of my home--not always clean, but love to go around!
ReplyDeleteYou made me cry. I guess that was probably the intention.
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