home is whenever i'm with you...

tonight i miss this room. what it felt like to be in this room...with friends around the table, drinking and laughing and drinking, and being seriously serious about loftier things. i remember when we bought (the table) and got it home, we prayed that it's use would always be one of genuine hospitality, warmth and love.

and i miss that piano. and Ash playing it. that one has been in storage since we moved up here and he's currently playing the "new" keyboard he bought to finally give himself the chance to play more now that we have been in Boston for 2.5 years already. it resides in our closet/office/music room behind our bedroom. it couldn't possibly sound more different. our life couldn't be much different now that it was in these pictures. it makes me incredibly sad some days that we do not still own this house...and that we can never return to that time or place. our first home together was here. i know people say it was just a house, and maybe time has made me see it as more than it was even at the time. i'm sure of it. but i am certain that i loved that house more than i hated it.

as for where we live now...at least we could paint it the colors we wanted...

what i love about where we live now has little to do with how anything looks or is setup. mostly, it's a struggle with the toys that E is slowly accumulating in such cramped quarters (and our furniture doesn't quite fit. the rest of the make-it-work furniture will be sold when we leave here). i love how our home smells when we come home from vacation. how large our new bed is...and comfy too. i love that E has her own room, which is a luxury in Boston, i realize. i love that friends of ours live close enough to us (though not two doors down, Su Su). i love that we can walk anywhere...to the T, to the downtown area of JP, to any playground we like, through the Forest Hills Cemetary...or we could drive...that anything we "need" is less than a mile away. i love that i'm starting to run into people that we know at the store or on our walks...finally! i used to hate take that for granted in Bhm, especially b/c i was never particularly interested in seeing whomever it was that i ran into, typically. Funny that a con has now become a pro.

as we contemplate where we will "end up" in life, i find myself with a laundry list of wants/do-not-wants (and the "oh hell nos"). i want community and have known it in both places we've lived. i want to know the back roads and be able to give directions or pass along a good electrician (although i DO have a mac guy). i want to have friends that will just come in the back door and riffle through my fridge. i want to have a space that works and that i can put my big table in so i can sit all of my friends around and laugh and drink and talk with.

and i want Ash to play his piano. his real piano.