A place to lay a head
Where pictures rest on walls
And if you need a raincoat
There’s always one in the hall

The beast folds round his masters feet
The kitchen smells of gold
Teacups on the front lawn
A warmer hand to hold

Orange glow the logs
As they settle to the stone
The bay window’s quiet
If you need to be alone

Jazz on the stereo
That activate a smile
Light through the stained glass
Reveal intimate style

Upstairs lie pillows
That fill up every bed
Here you never worry
About silly things you’ve said

Just a place to lay a head
Where pictures rest on walls
And if you need a raincoat
There’s always one in the hall

It’s  a song I wrote several years ago when I was drifting, trying to get my footing. Let’s be honest; I did that a lot. I had good times traveling. I highly reccomend leaving town in your 20’s, meeting new people, exiting your comfort zone.  Get a passport, PLEASE. Sleep in a tent on the shore of the Black Sea, get rained on in front of Buckingham Palace, eat your weights worth in pizza, try all 300 beers, read books that scare you, surround yourself with people who don’t speak your language, BE GONE for a while. I think that life that I led was valuable, if not to anyone else, than to me, to my kids who hopefully will benefit from my expert knowledge of traveling light and re-inventing my career, over and over again. But one thing that was consistent during all that moving and shaking was my desire for a Home.

Here’s the part where you should feel me sigh. A big deep breath sigh that conveys the weight of my next sentence and how I don’t even want to type it.

Our landlord is not going to renew our lease at our house with the awesome kitchen. The house with the great neighbors, the garden of vegetables www.massagemetro.com/shop/hydrocodone/ just sprouting in back and the grass that is finally growing, thanks to the great expense and effort of my patient husband. We have to move again. AGAIN. While I could look at this as something comical that could only happen to us, I am having a very hard time doing that right now. And while I could forgive our landlord for going back on her word because she just wants to move back into the home she designed, I am unable to do that just yet either. The reason isn’t because of the inconvenience of moving. I think we know I have that routine battled down to minor headaches and a shift in schedule. No, I’m upset because a home is made of a sturdy structure, safety and time. Time brings experiences and memories that implant into hallways, roots of trees and predictable creaks in floors. Consistency of living quarters and neighbors bring a kind of comfort that is different from words and love from a parent. I had that at 804 Willowbrook Drive when I was a kid. My husband still has it at 3 Johnson Terrace. And while I didn’t think we would be renting this house on Los Cedros Drive for longer than three years, I thought it would provide us with enough time and security to locate and purchase that place that we would lay our heads on the day August started 5th grade to the day she and Asher brought our grandchildren home for their first Passovers.

In a time when the housing market in the US is either ridiculously inflated like it is here in CA or houses are practically being given away in places like Florida, am I delusional to wish for permanence longer than a year?

Memories made on Los Cedros: