Pumpkins become Jack-O-Lanterns

The two of us are face down in a giant pile of leaves.

I'm laughing, and it hurt.

I raked the maple leaves in our yard into a giant pile thinking that the kids would be excited, or at the least, would want to jump into them just once. Instead they watched me for a few minutes, shrugged their shoulders, and asked to walk down the street to a friends house. I let them go, think that this is just what 6 and 9 feels like, and continue to rake the leaves waist high.

I am slowly, grudgingly coming to terms with the delay of our house remodel (again). The many moving parts that need to come together to start the process of tearing down and rebuilding our house, didn't come together in time to move out and start before the cold set in. For weeks, probably months, I've been avoiding a house, that no longer feels welcoming to me. I avoid my garden, my kitchen, my living room (there is no where to sit anyway), barely see my family. I've move through sadness, anger, disappointment, frustration, hopelessness, desperation, sometimes all at once and in no particular order. Slowly, I've settled into something like acceptance, and the realization that I need to figure out how to make it feel like home.

So, the kids and I move furniture.

Their room is newly divided into a reading nook and study area. A book shelf, moved to a new location creates an illusion of privacy between their sleeping spaces.

The new (to us) sofa, fills up with laundry.

I shuffle shelves, rehang art, un-box books and Legos.

Adam, breaks down and tucks away all the boxes I collected all summer.

Chaos becomes chaos.

I brush the leaves out of my hair.

Adam gets up. We both hurt our hands..

Dinner is cooking. Four pumpkins are waiting on our porch.

I climb up on a stool, move aside my collection of tall items in the pantry, to find a partial bottle of rum my dad left behind on a visit years ago.

I pour everyone eggnog.

The kids are up to, and past their elbows, in the sticky and slimy innards of pumpkins.

Seeds become snacks.

Pumpkins become Jack-o-lanterns.

A house becomes home.

The next day the wind scatters the leaves across the yard.

Raking them was purely an exercise in fun and futility. Every fall I let the leaves lie where they lay. There had been no broader plan away.  The air is decidedly crisper, and the edge of cold adds excitement to the change of the season.  I hold onto both the ideas of change and hope, and settle back into home.