Our first 24 hours in the trailer are behind us. They’ve been full of pretty normal things … simple things.
I went grocery shopping.
I bought dog food.
I vacuumed and made my bed.
A few boxes were unpacked and the floor was swept.
I’ve walked the dogs and yelled at them a couple times.
I’ve fussed at heaters and blown breakers.
I figured out how to climb into my top bunk.
I talked on the phone with a friend and texted others. Paid bills.
I’ve worried that I’m not the best dog mom.
Basically everything I do on a daily basis just in a tinier space. It doesn’t take near as long to vacuum, my bed is a whole heckuva lot smaller and the breaker issue is semi-undesirable.
It’s simple and I am in love. For the first time I feel as though I’m hand-in-hand with my eclectic childhood. The memories have usually been at arm’s length, as if I were peering through a dusty plate glass window at them. But now we are nose-to-nose.
I washed my hair in the kitchen sink this morning and suddenly I was eight years old again, my long hair dripping into a metal bowl and my mom’s long fingers scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and hot water pouring, pouring, pouring. Then the towel would be wound around my head and I’d flip it right side up, the muscles in my neck momentarily sore. All that today. Just from washing my hair.
When I swung (quite literally) into my top bunk, I flashed back to the years I spent manuevering into my top spot in the trailer I grew up in. One sister was on the top bunk next to me. My little brother slept under me.
I feel as if I’m walking the abandoned hallways of the old family homestead.
My favorite spot in the trailer already is this bench by the bolted down table: 
It reminds me of Mom’s spot in the trailer I grew up in. She always sat in this exact same space (albeit different trailer) and this is where she led Bible study, homeschool, and where she would set up her typewriter to write letters. There was always a stack of papers, a Bible and pens next to her on the seat. She nursed babies while seated here, talked to folks who came for her advice. She drank coffee, played Scrabble and sewed clothes here.
Last night when we were both home, tired and laughing about our adventure with a lost house key, she sat on the bench and I sat in the chair across from her. The significance wasn’t lost on me. To this day, it just feels like her hallow place.
Yesterday I sat on this wooden bench and blogged. And I thought about those days in the trailer and about mom’s seat.
I thought it’s fitting I occupy this space during this part of our journey. It’s another way we’re coming full circle.
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