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Monday, June 6, 2011

White with Blue-Gray Trim.

We are moving in fewer than three weeks. Our homes (all rented) have always been our love palaces. Our first home, the Magical Love Palace, was a two-bedroom, upper-floor duplex built in the '70s with badly stained carpet and a stackable washer and dryer. We loved the big bedroom, the huge living area, the pantry, and the linen closet. We worked overnight in the dorms (both students at the time) and stumbled up the outdoor stairs at 5 or 6 a.m., often with Cookout hot dogs, fries, and BBQ. We sweated through the summer without AC and froze in the mountain winter when the baseboard heaters busted. We got chubby on grilled hot dogs, potato chips, and ranch dip while we watched VH-1 Classic, Scrubs, and Star Trek Next Gen.

Our next home, The White Love Palace, was a beautiful one-bedroom apartment. The windows, balcony, and bathtub were huge. Here, we bought some of the items of which I'm still most proud: our washer and dryer, our tall and absurdly comfortable bed, and our gorgeous white dresser that reminds me of a wedding cake. We barely saw each other while we lived there because I worked days, and Josh worked nights. I read constantly for my creative writing MFA. I committed myself to daily bubble baths. I finally read the Chronicles of Narnia series. We watched The X Files and picked up Panera paninis and sandwiches on Sundays.

When Josh got a English teaching position at a rural high school, we moved to the Country Love Palace. This was a one-hundred-year-old farmhouse. The surrounding land was bristly and often held snake skins, but we enjoyed Coffee Cake and Cocoa, the residing stray cats. We even tried to adopt Cocoa, but she was miserable indoors. I didn't work that year and instead worked on my thesis and my goal of reading 100 books in a year. I read a great deal of poetry aloud and finally read the Little House on the Prairie series. Josh and I obsessed over Stargate. But the house was dark, strange trucks appeared in the driveway, we often heard rifles shots in the woods, and we experienced family traumas that made the house an empty place for us.

We moved to the Brick Love Palace, a cute little duplex in a cute historic district. I worked at a bookstore for a while and then began teaching as an adjunct. Josh continued at his high school. We went for walks, admiring the Jane Austen-esque cottage I adored one street over. We enjoyed the one season of The Dresden Files and watched Millennium. Here, we also discovered the new incarnation of Doctor Who. We were very happy here, even though we lost twin babies nine weeks into our pregnancy and another baby even earlier. We felt cozy and safe.

But I was ambitious and applied for a full-time position, never guessing I'd get it. I did. We moved to the Christmas Love Palace, a house that seemed to merit wreaths and candles year-round. We are at this CLP now. It is a brick, 1920s house with many windows, hardwood floors, a canning room, keyholes, and a telephone nook. It's huge. Here, we have had to watch Doctor Who like normal people (no more devouring a whole series in a couple of weeks...we have to wait for Saturday nights and now for the September return). Here, we made our son and learned, over time, that we are really going to have this baby in our lives. Here, we've felt him move. Now, he hardly stays still! Oliver has made this a blessed place.

But blessings can come in strange costumes. Josh's high school is laying him off, much to the outrage of students and parents and much to Josh's sorrow. But this will give him the opportunity to stay home with Oliver when he comes this fall. Still, we can't afford this huge Christmas palace. So we are moving very close by to a much smaller house. This will not be a Love Palace. Instead, it will be the OLC: Oliver's Love Cottage. A cottage is a cozy family place. It may be the first home he'll remember. It will be the home we'll bring him to from the hospital. It will be better than any bright stone, lilac-draped, forest-nestled, brook-bubbling cottage in any fairy tale.








(Image: http://leticiamaguire.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/renovation-a-tiny-victorian-cottage/)

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