going "home"

This past weekend we spent the weekend at my mother’s new house in Cocoa. My sister had miraculously (and accidentally) ended up with the weekend off work and I didn’t have any video work scheduled so we broke down and drove the hundred and some odd miles up to her place.

This was the first time my sister had been to the house and the first time I had been since the boxes were unpacked. Seeing all the pieces of a life there was powerful. And not just all the school photos from my brother, sister and I growing (although they pulled at my heartstrings as well). It is the furniture. The paintings of my great-grandfathers. Nana’s rocking chair. Grandpa’s photography. The old milk crates that my mom refuses to replace with a bookcase packed with books that I remember from my childhood and some I’ve never seen before. The art from Japan. The rugs from Europe. The fact that you could look at the house from any angle and see something ELSE beautiful.

I noticed the small things. The brown pumice stone not just in a basket, but in a basket filled with smooth river rocks. The circular mirror in the room with rectangular wall panels.

It was touching.

We ate well. We laughed. We joked. We played Sorry (although the taped together box was missing several of the colorful plastic - so we played with quarters, nickels and dimes instead).

All in all it was a phenomenal weekend.