Homecoming and Good Omens

I'd love to say that we are moved and unpacked and kicking back with a glass of wine under the trees.  That would be a pretty bold lie since we spent the day working on the kitchen cabinets and lighting throughout the house, and I haven't even begun to put some of the boxes away.  I can say that the inside remodel is almost done, but I don't have much to report on the outside just yet except one story from moving day that seemed to be a good omen.

We had worked like devils for the past three weeks packing and working on the house, finally making the big move on Memorial Day when my dear brothers gave up their day off to help us.  That evening, the house was full of boxes, my kid was filthy, and I was close to collapse when at the edge of dark, Jack summoned me out to the old orchard.

The house that we are living in was his grandparent's house and is across a small meadow from my in-laws.  That means that I have the eccentricities of a house built on a shoestring a long time ago, but I also have the remnants of Homer's garden and Jack's grandma's orchard.  Years ago when we were still in college, Jack used to bring me apricots from his grandmother's trees, but the orchard is all but dead now.  The trees are gone or bare except for one tree that has two green branches that were covered in tiny apricots, not much bigger than large grapes.  Some had fallen and Jack held one for each of us - tiny, but sweet.  We picked up the windfalls as the sky darkened lest the ants and birds scavenge them.

 It would take Bell and me picking a handful everyday as they ripened to even make enough for a pie for Rubilee, but it seemed like an omen of the riches to be had in this little house above the lake. What was more complete than fruit picked by us on our first night in our own yard from a tree planted by Isabella's great grandparents?  I knew then that this was homecoming for us.


I know we had a good life before.  I know we have plans for a farm life to come.  But "before" is over now,  and plans are just plans.  I just know that this life we have chosen for us, for Isabella, is going to be rich, the kind of rich that is picking apricots in the cool of the day, just at the edge of dark.