Continuing my goodbyes to our house, as started here.
This house was our rental when we moved to Fredericksburg, and when we realized we couldn’t afford anything else, we worked out a price with the owner, who was anxious to divest himself of rental property.
Originally, the house had a tiny back patio with a rusting tin roof. After a hailstorm brought us a new one, we expanded the roofline and the patio on a chilly day like today. (It was 18 degrees, and the workers had a little fire pit going.) Since then this patio, with a ceiling fan and an octagonal picnic table built by my husband, is my favorite room of the house.
I’ve spent countless hours writing out there. I wrote most of The Joy of Poetry there. I wrote The Joyful Partnership of Poetry and Memoir workshop there. I wrote 11 years worth of articles, features, WOTYs and columns there.
But this fall I’ve written more inside. First it was too hot, then it was too cold. We rearranged the room off the patio, which is the brightest room in the house, and now it’s easier to work there. I’ve been writing a new workshop, Tea Time: Writing Our Leaves and Our Lives, inside. I hope it will be okay, but not writing outside doesn’t feel okay.
The patio is a microcosm of our history with this house—we took hail and turned it into a home improvement project. Every square inch of this home is better than we found it, although sometimes it took a crisis for us to act.
Our new house has a smaller patio on a smaller lot, meaning no room to expand the patio, hail or no hail. The picnic table/writing desk will come with us. My writing will have a new view.
