Our House on the Hill
Inspired by the song “House,” written and performed by JOY.
Trees dance, and the grass sways in unison, choreographed and synchronized, effortlessly moving to the sounds of a breeze.
This is our piece of earth.
These are our walls.
The doors with the chipped paint and baseboards that have earned their scars through excitable dogs and remote-controlled cars.
Your canvas with brushed paint strokes, inspired by every ripple in the lake just on the horizon.
Oh, what a house we’ve made.
The sight of first steps and first falls and first loves.
The kitchen where the occasional meal turned into the occasional towel-waving competition with gut-wrenching jokes and side-splitting laughs as we take turns hushing the smoke detector that should have been moved years ago.
A view of our serenity, perched upon our hill as we watch peace roll through our neighborhood like the fog we used to catch gliding east over San Francisco.
And as we sit in our heavily worn Adirondack chairs, studying the fog patterns, pondering their formation, time stands still in this marvelous space of ours.
Oh, what a house we’ve made.
Generations of familial storytellers will travel to the pages of our first chapter, gently picking fruits and berries from the trees we planted as seeds, standing in the garden we’d cared for as if we knew this season would come.
Our families will gather together, bringing feasts of intentionality to our resanded table, which should have been replaced years ago, though the unvarnished wood holds far too many stories to be discarded, or worse, handed over to anyone who’d simply use that table to just eat.
We’ll continue to sit here in this sun-soaked room, looking around at our circle, marveling at a life well lived and a job well done.
Oh, what a house we have made.