If You See It As a Home

We are well into the frenzy of warm-weather activities and, in common with the theme of my last few posts, summertime calls for giving some much-deserved attention to the eaves and ells we call a house. Because the heightened temps better support the outside musts a house demands, summer is the season of grass, garden, and glistening glass galore...which explains why, in the last two weeks alone, I've reseeded, fertilized, and conditioned the front and backyards, planted new bushes, and had the entire outside (and some of the inside) windows polished and gleamed to a sparkling shine. (And, though it didn't fit into my alliterative "g" pattern, the entirety of the upstairs carpeting has been soaped and sucked to a like-new buff. There's nothing like making fists with your toes in newly cleaned carpet, you know).

Why all the fuss?

We used to have a tradition of celebrating our house's birthday. I adopted the practice from a friend of long ago who'd raised her children into adulthood and who, with reflection and contemplation, graciously shared with a group of us the practices she found made a real difference in the dynamic of her home. Amidst some of her sillier ones like Upside Down Day on April 1st or serving Green Eggs and Ham on St. Patrick's, the house birthday party had a heartfelt impact on me. What better way to reserve time for reminiscing our fondest memories of a year gone by in the place where our stories begin?

Then Judsen came along, a mere two days before the house did three years prior. Now, I love butter-cream cake and singing Happy Birthday but, seriously, one can only take so much beehive whirlwinds in the space of 48 hours. So now I'm pondering how to remake that tradition...and one way is to get the entire Team Covak involved in giving back to the structure that gives us so much. So the kids weed and water, plant and prune while Craig primes the mower, spreads the corn gluten, and lays strips of new sod. Together, in the big and small, inside and out, we say thanks to God for the gift of this house...and learn some work ethic in between.

In a downturned American economy and with global crises raging worldwide, we are blessed to have a beautiful home warming us in winter and cooling us in summer. We've a French-style fridge housing healthy morsels and a washing machine and dryer to clean our coverings. Each of our children have their own room filled with pictures and toys and trinkets of adventures  past. Pictures hang on the walls and books stand on the shelves while friends flood the front door and gather 'round the table. A good life flows from a home that, without these abundant gifts, would merely be a house.

That's why I fuss. Why I pour into its care: because this house is more that eaves and ells. It's our home, one in which we'll see our children come to age - it's the nest they'll one day leave. And I want to see it standing, proud and loved, decades from now, knowing that we preserved it not because it was an investment, or an address, or a slip in the postal boxes. But because we loved it. Loved our family in it.

Because it is possible to love a house...if you see it as a home.