Right Smack Dab in the Middle

It's weird, isn't it, how when we're right smack dab in the middle of something we don't realize just how important that moment might be. Or how even when we're just living- just doing our thing, day after day, it's tough to take a step back and know that where we are is someplace so good, someplace we'll one day look back upon with so much fondness.

Hank and I rented our first place together in the summer of 2005. We'd been together for about a year, and after a particularly eventful July and August I packed up my things and made the trek to the town I now call home. It was an out-of-character move for me and I remember my Mom and friends asking, "well, are you sure?" But I was sure, as strange as it was at the time. I was positive this was the right move for me, the right choice even for a girl who was more often than not unsure when it came to matters of the heart. But I did it, I made the decision along with Hank, and I drove myself up to that little town, car full of my belongings.

It was a tiny, tiny place up there over that antique shop, and old too, having been built in 1917. It was charming of course, in the way only a falling apart, ancient building can be, but to us it was new and fresh and all we saw was a beginning. We made that tiny place our tiny home over the next year, the kitchen that was only three steps long, the miniature living room, the even smaller bathroom, and our bedroom-closet that was literally only big enough for a twin bed, with no room to walk on either side.

We spent our days that year in such close quarters, we lived and loved and built the foundation of us in that little apartment. We'd get tarts at the bakery downstairs, we'd go on midnight walks around the square, we'd sit on the stairs in the hallway for hours, stealing internet from nearby businesses. I think back to those nights in that twin bed, limbs tangled together in that small space, trying to stay warm as the ancient furnace died more than it worked. And as much as I loved the simple romance of that first place on Cortez Street, I remember thinking about how badly I wanted to move into a bigger place, onto our second home, to see what was coming up next, right on the horizon.

Life went on and we experienced all of those "nexts" we dreamed of, and now as I sit here at my computer with my husband at work and our baby asleep in his crib, I think about that time- I recall that little bed in that little space, think back to when we'd sit around and talk forever about the dreams we had for our life and ourselves. It reminds me how looking back, everything seems so clear, but when you're in it, sometimes it's hard to know where you're headed. I have a tendency to want to rush, to get to the next thing, the better, the best, but I think sometimes it's good to just sit back and enjoy the journey you're on, the place you're at, the tiny bed you're in. It reminds me of this. To just stop and embrace the now, which might just be the beginning of so much more than you know.

xoxo