Built Different

The other night we were taking a moment to relax when my new husband points out that I have a lot of projects planned for the house. Actually , that I have plans for things to work on that will cover then next ten years ( oh, he underestimates me a bit - easily the next 25 years!) He says that he wants to come home to a house that is mostly done, put his stuff down and relax. While I understand this is his desire - I don't want to do that at all. And it makes me wonder about how I am built.

Over the past few months, I have watched my dad struggle with fatigue from chemotherapy and cancer. Of all the symptoms, it seems to have been the most difficult for him - because it interfered with his ability to work - making him unable to work as he would have liked. I am built like him - with that compulsion to work. Unfortunately, we are just like Matilda, the new pup - built for work and even when not on the job, the brain keeps working.

When I see the house, or walk through the yard, I see possibilities - where a pond could go, how the porch from our French doors can wrap around the corner, a path through the woods with a couple of benches and a little shed filled with books and wind chimes for sitting quietly. A new house offers so many possibilities - and ours is unpretentious, comfortable, beckoning you to come and sit awhile on the porch overlooking the ducks and the currently soggy yard.

These possibilities to him seem like more work - to me they are a way to make the house mine - to convert it from a currently overgrown and careworn spot into a paradise where our grandkids will play. I envision the ducks swimming in the pond like the ones in Sweden at Skansen, I envision sitting on our new porch , right outside the bedroom, watching the stars go by - or reading the Sunday paper soaking up the sunshine. I think about that path and the magical beauty of walking through the woods - able to see where we are walking so that we can avoid the snakes the creek seems to be so famous for. And the little shed - I picture the two of us escaping to read a book and sit quietly, listening only to the wind in the chimes, while we drift away absorbed in the story.

I'm built differently - I see the work that needs to be done and it is exciting and thrilling to see a project come to fruition. Working on projects allows me to feel like I am leaving my mark, doing something to improve the world during the little while I am here. Just like the gardeners before me who planted and cut, I am compelled to shape that space into something marvelous. Someday someone else will live in my house and tend my yard and marvel at the flowers that seem to pop out of no where, filled with the same joy I have had this year.