The View From a Different Window: ~it all started with a paintbrush~

     Good Friday morning everyone out there from a place far away nestled safely into the Grand Valley of south western Colorado. When I woke up this morning and washed up before making a pot of coffee, I had to laugh as I saw specks of "paper bag brown" paint on both of my hands. We're doing some serious painting around here and last night Mike helped me to get most of the walls we are working on finished. Obviously I missed washing off a few spots of it when I took a shower before bed last night. The brown color is very soothing to me and I chose it for the walls of our small extra bedroom, one that I will soon turn into an office area for myself. Everyone needs a place to go to from time to time for some peace and solitude. This spot will soon become mine.

     It was kind of weird last night as we worked together, Mike taping the windows off while I worked on painting the bottom part. I looked at him and said "You know, this is a good feeling to be able to finally do this, don't you?" He smiled and said that he understood exactly what I was saying. Ever since I had arrived here early this past summer, Mike had told me that I could do whatever I wanted to in changing/redecorating the 100-year old farmhouse that we live in. It had been a "bachelor's" house for nearly 7 years and ok, ok it really did need some sprucing up.

     I had been putting off his offers of doing some interior redecorating for one reason and one reason only. I was desperately homesick for my old life in Kansas and to be real honest, I wasn't sure if I would be able to stick it out here. I couldn't bring myself to put a lot of work, time and money into doing something that I might not be around to enjoy in the future. Heck, I was having a hard enough time just bringing out my remaining belongings from my old home along East 14th Street back in Hutchinson. Painting was a sign of permanence to me and well, I just wasn't sure that I would make it. I was wrong, really wrong.

     Looking back, I think the change for the "good" for me must have started about late September. It crept up in the form of the most beautiful earthy blue paint that we applied to the walls of our bedroom and the subsequent decision to try and decorate in a lighthouse theme. We hung an old fishing net that I picked up in the Puget Sound area last summer and filled it with numerous seashells that both of us had been collecting. We added other things, in particular lighthouse memorabilia that I had come across during my trip to Maine in 2012. Little by little the room took on a most peaceful aura and I liked that. It settled me down to be there and that was good my friends.

     Then later on in January of this year, one of us had the crazy idea to repaint the kitchen and add some extra lighting. Not sure if I remember rightly who the "one of us" was but no matter, we found ourselves for 3 weeks, up to our eyebrows, in another shade of blue, a pale one this time, as we coated over the old color. We did some more cleaning out of stuff, rearranged things once again and just last weekend were grateful to have our friend Mel from Grand Junction come down and help Mike put up the new track lighting. When we finished, we took a picture and it made both of us happy to see the results. Now, well now it's the third room we've moved on to and with luck we will be completely finished before mid-March.

     Sometimes when I think of all the struggles that I have gone through in order to find myself "ok" with calling this new place my home, I have to stop and think about my mom. Lois Scott lived in the house on East 14th Street in Hutchinson, Kansas for over 25 years. When the time came for her to leave it and enter long-term care in a nursing home, it was not a happy moment in time for her. When she sold the house (I later bought it) and emptied it of all of her possessions, it marked the beginning of a long 4-year journey of existence in a room much smaller than the living room I am now sitting in as I type this blog post. When she passed away a couple of weeks after her 87th birthday in 2007, very few of her original belongings from her old home could be found in her room. Time and time again we would say to her, "Mom why don't let us bring your_______________________ from home. Don't you think it would be nice to have it here with you?"   Fill in the blank friends with anything you could imagine an 87-year old might have had....a chair, record player, cabinet, a pretty picture from the living room wall.  My siblings and I tried them all. Each time we would ask, she would always flatly refuse and we knew why. By integrating things from her life before nursing home care would have been acknowledging the fact that she was never going back there. Perhaps some of you who have cared for aging parents know exactly of what I speak. At first, I was just like her here along the Western Slopes but no longer. This is my new home and this is where I belong. Wielding a paintbrush may be the strangest of ways to put down roots into the soil of Colorado but that's how I feel it to be for me.

     Am I totally over my homesickness? Probably not. Am I better today on this last Friday in February than I was in that last Friday of May in 2013? Absolutely! Mike and I talk often about this and that's something I am really grateful for. If I have a sad moment and for whatever reason my memories take me back there to a place now well over 600 miles away, he understands why I need to call and talk to my family or friends back in south central Kansas. When you stop to think about it, thank goodness this is not the pioneer days where people made the trek west and sent a letter back across the mountains once a year with a Pony Express rider. All things considered in today's era of modern communication, we have it pretty nice after all.

     It's 5:30 in the a.m. here and time to get ready to get out the door for the day. Hoping the days won't be much longer until we get word from another place, far away from us here, that a new life has been born. That little Miller baby is due any time now and both Momma/Daddy are more than ready for that to happen. God has blessed me a thousand fold and I surely pray the same for you all my friends and family. This is the last Friday of February, the 28th day to be exact and a great day to be alive in! I'm going to do as the "Good Book" so admonishes us to...."rejoice and give thanks in it."