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I'm sitting here, watching the Interpreter and my mind wanders. I've been driving around here, in the "Old Downtown" area, with its pre-Emancipation houses and Victorians. I told S.O. when we first got here that I'd rather live in a new house--less maintenance and all that. But I know now that's not true. What is it that prevents me from knowing my own truths for so long.

What is it that I love about people spaces that are slightly funky? A little unkempt, maybe smelling a bit like damp earth and wood? Obviously, my past, the places I think of when I think of the home of my childhood. I know also that I like old houses because in some sense the decoration is already done, without putting a single picture or painting on the wall. The knowledge of lives is already contained in the nicks in the baseboards, the skewed door, the seventies tiles in the bathroom. Of course, the question is, how much is one willing to pay for this? When the furnace goes out? When the roof and windows need to be replaced? When you find out how much lead paint or asbestos is all around? When S.O. disagrees for perfectly valid reasons?

Another of my reasons for old rather than new can be very easily twisted. Old is a reminder of the impermanence of homes...and lives. A reminder of the necessity of not wasting your only life or putting too much emphasis on couches, curtains, pictures on a wall. Maybe if I was stronger in my beliefs, new or old house wouldn't matter so much. Maybe if I was stronger in my beliefs, I would be living my beliefs instead of playing them out in my head. I think about that a lot when it comes to A and living in the South. I'm no longer a Christian (haven't been for a long while) but not quite a Bhuddist. I need something stronger than a partial spiritual life to be a good mother for her.

This blog is perhaps a start at the living I had hoped for, and yet it's still filled with irony. A plays at my feet, having gotten up early from her nap. She is waiting for me to finish.