About a year and a half ago Kirby and I decided it was time
to do something with the big front room of our house that we had intended for
our children. We needed to let go some more. We needed to be able to walk
through our house without constantly picturing our kids playing and sleeping
safely in their beds in that room.
We ended up dividing the room into two, with one part being
a dining room and the other a small study for me. It was rather exciting as we
didn’t really have a dining room and now we could have friends and family over
for meals more often. We painted a feature wall in an almost apple shade of
green and put a lovely picture of trees in the centre of it.
The room looked good. We used it. We didn’t forget that we
had intended it to be our children’s room, but it made it easier to see it
being used differently.
Then we moved house.
We moved mainly to be closer to our nephew, but also because
our old house was eighty years old and needed a lot of maintenance. We bought
our lovely new home further out of the city near some beautiful wetlands. It
was literally love at first sight when we found it.
As we anticipated moving into our home we though about the
different things we could do with it, how it would be our home as a couple…
We were very, very excited.
The six month anniversary of our move has come and gone and
to be honest the house is pretty much the same as when we moved in. It is our
home, but it is not really reflective of who we are as individuals and as a
couple.
Recently I thought that perhaps we needed to live in the
house for a while before we could decide what we really wanted to do with the
rooms, the colours, the textiles… I figured if we gave it time we would see
what we wanted to do.
It’s only really been in the last few weeks that I’ve truly
realised why we haven’t made any changes yet. Kirby and I still have work to do
as a couple. I mean, we always will have work to do for the rest of our lives,
but we have work to do in terms of clarifying what works for each of us
(colour, sound, light, smell), sharing those ideas with each other and creating
common goals that we can work towards. We need to create a vision together –
that doesn’t include anyone else, and doesn’t include children.
I’ve been busy in my little mind creating the house of my
dreams, but what I like and what I want may not be what Kirby likes and wants.
After eight years together and almost seven years of marriage you would think
we would have our likes and dislikes permanently imprinted on each other’s
brains, but not so!
This weekend Kirby and I will be sitting down together to
have a bit of a brain storming session. I’m looking forward to it, but I think
Kirby is looking toward it with some trepidation! I have promised that I won’t
be stubborn in my ideas – well, not much…
