When Did Your Home Feel Like Yours?

Homeownership thoughts three springs in

Friday morning, this little guy was sitting in our front yard:

I like it.

This morning, rice ball (arancini) mix is in the fridge, ready for breading and frying tomorrow morning. Pizza dough—my shortcut for freshly baked Italian bread—is defrosting, and going to sit out a few hours to rise before baking. A lamb rack and a lamb leg are spice-rubbed and dry brining in the fridge. The tulips are still hanging in there, the grass we’ve been seeding over the last month is coming up. The deck I rebuilt is nearly ready to paint. Our home is very nice, and spring is always exciting, even though the spring weather is very brief—in Northern Virginia, winter turns into summer very quickly.

Easter anchors spring like Christmas anchors winter. Of course there’s something more than strictly religious to the placement and the nature of these holidays. We’re humans. If God, in the telling of my faith, became man, why wouldn’t His holidays be adapted to our cultures and our needs?

It’s funny how my mind wanders when I’m doing physical work, since there’s nothing in particular to think about or focus on. Whenever I’m out working on the property, I have this thought that suburban life is like a Twilight Zone episode; one of those “you got what you wished for” plots, or something. You’ll be reseeding grass and dragging around hoses and leafblowing and packing lawn bags forever, with the satisfaction and relaxation of taking it easy on the house and piece of land you own always elusive.

I know that isn’t true: what’s true is that we bought a home with a lot of deferred maintenance, and it takes two people with full-time jobs a lot of time to clear through that backlog. But this year, our third spring here, it feels for the first time like we’re really making our own home and property and not sort of caretaking someone else’s.