Sunday, May 31, 2009

Home is Where Our Family Is

When I was a kid, my family moved a lot. Not military brat or Foreign Service a lot; but more than I would have chosen if anyone had actually asked me.

And we never moved into a house that looked the way it looked on the Sunday afternoon when my sister and I first met it. In fact, family legend reports that the first time I had dinner at the grown up dining room table I began the conversation by announcing we should move the kitchen to the garage and the powder room to the basement. So central was the constant re-design of our homes to the Roeder lifestyle.

And why would I share this information with you? Because I know just what it’s like to know that we are moving and not have any idea what it’s going to be like when we get there.

It’s gonna look different; it’s gonna smell different; it’s gonna sound different. It’s gonna BE different.

Since I don’t do fairy tales, I’m not going to tell you that I loved every house we moved into, or that every move was immediately comfortable. I didn’t, and it wasn’t.

But every one of the moves I made as a kid had a really important ending: whatever new walls had popped up, whatever weird new plants appeared in the garden, the small band of colorful characters that was my family was always there together, discovering what worked and what needed more changes to make the life we shared.

And so too with our Thad’s family: we don’t yet know what our new home will feel like, or smell like, or sound like. But we’re all gonna be there together – adding stuff, moving stuff, doing what we need to do to build our tent on our field of hope.

Come dream with us, and play with us, and share this new experience with us.

Every Sunday starting June 6 at 10 a.m.:

5870 W Olympic Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036 Map

See y’all!