14 July 2013
A plumb tree and berries and rhubarb. Oh, and asparagus. These were the wishes an 8 year old girl had for the new home her family would find. Their "forever home" as her mother described.
First of all, who has at the top of their wish list "Plumb Tree"? This struck me as very unusual. Even more unusual because I have one, though I never specifically wished for it.
When I bought my house, the heirs who sold it didn't remember what kind of tree it was. That is an apple tree they said, and this one has fruit too. We can't remember what. The neighbors didn't know either. Crab apples? Well...a neighbor said, they are small like that, but no. Clearly no one had Eaten from the tree in recent memory.
It turned out to bear little yellow plums. Small and sweet. You need to eat them the day (or next) you pick them or it's too late. One year I thought it was dying. I kept trimming off the dead wood and it kept bouncing back. Last year the plums were the most delicious yet - the whole tree yeilded at most a few quarts but the plums were pale yellow with a red blush and soft and sweet. Fabio tells me it's the same variety prevalent in his region of Italy. I have never seen them before. (Though I don't have extensive plum experience.)
So this family came to see the house yesterday, which I have for sale, and then emailed this morning to come back again, but I was away from email digging up ferns and blackberries for garage salers who couldn't get enough, as plants kept selling out at my sale.
The young father stopped by. "I figured you were not checking email since you're having the sale," he explained. They wanted to see the house again and bring their daughters. Somehow I had neglected the idea of giving the family my phone number.
They brought their in-laws, as before, and another young advisor of sorts. I let them have their run of the house since the night before I had talked (and talked) them through it. And, after the girls had seen the house, I asked if they wanted to pick berries. We went out to the blackberry patch.
My dad had come over this afternoon and sat in a chair in the patch. I had tied the berry canes up to the dog fence this year and cut back what grew through the fence in the spring. I thought I would keep it small. Maybe I would be back in Belize and not around for berries anyway. Somehow instead of small, this grew a most beautiful and just-short-of-unweildy hedge on one side of the fence for sit-down picking and the plants re-poked through only the top half of the fence on the other side, convenient for stand-up picking. I am not clever enough to have devised this with intention, but I was clever enough to see that my dad could sit in a chair on one side of the fence to pick, and I could stand on the other side. He picked all he could eat and then some for the bowl. I picked on the stand-up side and then also the Untended sprawl of bushes further back which stretched clear from the house to the middle of the now vacant dog pen (since the hounds are on sabbatical from Rabbit in Belize). In all, we picked about a quart in the afternoon, after I had already picked a pint that morning.
So the berries were mostly cleaned out when the young children arrived and they had to peek under leaves and go in narrow spaces by the house to find the ripe ones remaining. All the more adventurous for them.
Then we stood by the long narrow bed, seen from the dining room, home to three blueberry and two cranberry bushes, and we talked while the children drew on the back stair with sidewalk chalk. We migrated to the 10-foot round herb garden and the young mother told me they had planted many of the same herbs at their house. I told her about garlic that will bear in the spring. How scapes will grow out from among the greens with a seed pod on the end and hang in a loop back to the ground. She had seen them at the Farmer's Market. When the greens start to turn brown, you can carefully dig up the heads of garlic, I explained, spouting my recent internet research.
The girls examined the blueberries, not yet ready to pick. They wrinkled their noses when I said the bushes in between were cranberries. A fire crackled amid big logs in the fire pit nearby and they wondered if they could make s'mores. I have two of the three required items, I told them. But no chocolate. Though we could roast marshmallows. The grandmother said no, they hadn't come to eat, she said.
Then the eight year old called from the plum tree. We went to inspect the little green fruits with her, still a month to go before they are ripe. I told them about the rhubarb patch at the far corner of the yard and how I planted it in the sun and in the previous owner's garden plot but it did not fare well. That the smaller patch at the corner of the house (which was notably planted where I used to keep the kitchen compost) produced much more. We saw the bed full of gladiolas sprouting up that will flower in late summer and fall. Oddly among them are three or four shoots of fledgling asparagus. I had transplanted the roots from another garden a summer or two past when I found them unrevived while digging. Hmph I thought, yet didn't toss them out. This little four-foot circle bed was largely unassigned at the time. I threw them in there and this year they surprised me and grew - one into a crazy, five-foot spindly shoot, the others in foot-high clumps of four or five toothpick thin stems.
We stood then in the back yard: my friend Tom who staged the house for me so beautifully and kept the outdoor fire crackling while we meandered the yard (after a day of garage sale duty), the family's young advisor peering up at the terribly damaged shingles needing replacement, the in-law mother and dad who seemed much more pleased with the house today than yesterday, and the starry-eyed, young, home-seeking couple. And two girls, eight and six, very observant and lively and well-behaved and taken with everything.
As the conversation lulled, the eight year old wrapped herself around her mother's legs, looked up at her, and said, "I want this to be our forever home!"
I was stunned. Wow.
Her mom explained the family had been talking about the idea of a "forever home" - meaning a place they meant to stay, not to move again soon - and how the eight year old had wanted A Plum Tree at her forever home, and berries, and rhubarb. Oh, and asparagus. I looked wide-eyed at the group. I was the only one reacting. Everyone else had already seen the correlations. Nevermind how the mother was delighted by a big kitchen and a dishwasher and pocket doors and an open floor plan good for kids running in circles and an extremely long bathroom counter to easily accommodate the whole family brushing teeth elbow to elbow and then some. But my home has the little girls' whole wish list. And more! Why there was a "secret door" uncovered when I insulated the basement walls which led out of the house into the garden shed, and there is a robin nest with three blue eggs on the cross beam under the deck, and a strawberry bed out front, and a million stairs to the front door for children to color with chalk.
"It was hidden?" The young father asked about the door uncovered in the basement.
Yes! I said. It was a short 3/4 door sealed shut and covered by paneling, and I had them open it up and cut the concrete to install a door as large as the foundation would allow - still shy of standard.
"So hobbits lived here then?" he mused.
The eight year old explored the odd little shed built against the house and under the deck with delight at the idea of hobbits.
We said goodbye and they made their way down the long driveway of what (I believe) we all believe will become their "forever" home.
I suspect a call may come in the next few days with an offer and I can see the horizon of being able to return to Fabio in Belize. But I realize that even if they Don't call to offer - due to some advice from the advisor, or a parent balking at money, or a sudden move to Maine or fear of hobbits - one family dearly loved my house and it lifted my spirits, which had sunk low. I wondered why no call had come from the expensive ad I placed in the paper. I wondered if the market was still too bad to sell. I wondered if maybe no one wants houses built in 1960 with just one bathroom not three. And I wondered where the money is going to come from to replace the roof before winter... God bolstered my courage.
This week when I wrote Fabio an email about waking up after stressful dreams and feeling discombobulated and afraid, he didn't tell me "don't let it bother you" or try to convince me of positives, he told me to trust God.
"Just rest in Jesus' arms, He will tell you exactly how to handle things," he wrote.
How beautiful. Che bello. That's how you don't just sell a house - make it happen, and hope you get your money out. But how you bless a family with just the house they were looking for down to pocket doors and expansive counter space and blackberries others might dig out as weeds and asparagus dormant but sprouts the summer a little girl is coming to see it, and for secret closets... for so many things we can't humanly match, yet God delights to do. He delights to answer the heart yearnings of little eight year olds and young 30 year olds and 50 and 60 and 90-year olds. In the God scenario, still the house is sold and if you get your money out, or more, it's His blessing (and if you don't...it's still all good. For other reasons. That's another post...) But in the God scenario, there is so much more because you trusted and rested and believed. And God has such latitude to work in our lives when we trust and rest and believe.
When Jesus asked his motley crew of followers if they wanted to leave Him as the masses were doing, Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed...” John 6.68-69
I am pondering tonight the amazing intricacy of how God works in our lives and weaves our paths together with significance and blessing and love when we believe and trust. How He loves to please us, how He delights in our gratitude, how He reveals Himself to humanity in the smallest details and blessings in life. And how the best conduit for that revealing is a life resting in Him. Who could have imagined a tree that no one even remembered, that seemed to be half dead, could be revived and bear fruit and be the very dream a little girl was hoping for? I just think that's beautiful. And I think of all of the ways we are like a plum tree...seemingly forgotten, half dead. God cuts out the dead wood year after year (it may feel like merciless pruning) and we revive and we bless. And our existence matters.
In awe...whether the call should come or not.
Susan
A plumb tree and berries and rhubarb. Oh, and asparagus. These were the wishes an 8 year old girl had for the new home her family would find. Their "forever home" as her mother described.
First of all, who has at the top of their wish list "Plumb Tree"? This struck me as very unusual. Even more unusual because I have one, though I never specifically wished for it.
When I bought my house, the heirs who sold it didn't remember what kind of tree it was. That is an apple tree they said, and this one has fruit too. We can't remember what. The neighbors didn't know either. Crab apples? Well...a neighbor said, they are small like that, but no. Clearly no one had Eaten from the tree in recent memory.
It turned out to bear little yellow plums. Small and sweet. You need to eat them the day (or next) you pick them or it's too late. One year I thought it was dying. I kept trimming off the dead wood and it kept bouncing back. Last year the plums were the most delicious yet - the whole tree yeilded at most a few quarts but the plums were pale yellow with a red blush and soft and sweet. Fabio tells me it's the same variety prevalent in his region of Italy. I have never seen them before. (Though I don't have extensive plum experience.)
So this family came to see the house yesterday, which I have for sale, and then emailed this morning to come back again, but I was away from email digging up ferns and blackberries for garage salers who couldn't get enough, as plants kept selling out at my sale.
The young father stopped by. "I figured you were not checking email since you're having the sale," he explained. They wanted to see the house again and bring their daughters. Somehow I had neglected the idea of giving the family my phone number.
They brought their in-laws, as before, and another young advisor of sorts. I let them have their run of the house since the night before I had talked (and talked) them through it. And, after the girls had seen the house, I asked if they wanted to pick berries. We went out to the blackberry patch.
My dad had come over this afternoon and sat in a chair in the patch. I had tied the berry canes up to the dog fence this year and cut back what grew through the fence in the spring. I thought I would keep it small. Maybe I would be back in Belize and not around for berries anyway. Somehow instead of small, this grew a most beautiful and just-short-of-unweildy hedge on one side of the fence for sit-down picking and the plants re-poked through only the top half of the fence on the other side, convenient for stand-up picking. I am not clever enough to have devised this with intention, but I was clever enough to see that my dad could sit in a chair on one side of the fence to pick, and I could stand on the other side. He picked all he could eat and then some for the bowl. I picked on the stand-up side and then also the Untended sprawl of bushes further back which stretched clear from the house to the middle of the now vacant dog pen (since the hounds are on sabbatical from Rabbit in Belize). In all, we picked about a quart in the afternoon, after I had already picked a pint that morning.
So the berries were mostly cleaned out when the young children arrived and they had to peek under leaves and go in narrow spaces by the house to find the ripe ones remaining. All the more adventurous for them.
Then we stood by the long narrow bed, seen from the dining room, home to three blueberry and two cranberry bushes, and we talked while the children drew on the back stair with sidewalk chalk. We migrated to the 10-foot round herb garden and the young mother told me they had planted many of the same herbs at their house. I told her about garlic that will bear in the spring. How scapes will grow out from among the greens with a seed pod on the end and hang in a loop back to the ground. She had seen them at the Farmer's Market. When the greens start to turn brown, you can carefully dig up the heads of garlic, I explained, spouting my recent internet research.
The girls examined the blueberries, not yet ready to pick. They wrinkled their noses when I said the bushes in between were cranberries. A fire crackled amid big logs in the fire pit nearby and they wondered if they could make s'mores. I have two of the three required items, I told them. But no chocolate. Though we could roast marshmallows. The grandmother said no, they hadn't come to eat, she said.
Then the eight year old called from the plum tree. We went to inspect the little green fruits with her, still a month to go before they are ripe. I told them about the rhubarb patch at the far corner of the yard and how I planted it in the sun and in the previous owner's garden plot but it did not fare well. That the smaller patch at the corner of the house (which was notably planted where I used to keep the kitchen compost) produced much more. We saw the bed full of gladiolas sprouting up that will flower in late summer and fall. Oddly among them are three or four shoots of fledgling asparagus. I had transplanted the roots from another garden a summer or two past when I found them unrevived while digging. Hmph I thought, yet didn't toss them out. This little four-foot circle bed was largely unassigned at the time. I threw them in there and this year they surprised me and grew - one into a crazy, five-foot spindly shoot, the others in foot-high clumps of four or five toothpick thin stems.
We stood then in the back yard: my friend Tom who staged the house for me so beautifully and kept the outdoor fire crackling while we meandered the yard (after a day of garage sale duty), the family's young advisor peering up at the terribly damaged shingles needing replacement, the in-law mother and dad who seemed much more pleased with the house today than yesterday, and the starry-eyed, young, home-seeking couple. And two girls, eight and six, very observant and lively and well-behaved and taken with everything.
As the conversation lulled, the eight year old wrapped herself around her mother's legs, looked up at her, and said, "I want this to be our forever home!"
I was stunned. Wow.
Her mom explained the family had been talking about the idea of a "forever home" - meaning a place they meant to stay, not to move again soon - and how the eight year old had wanted A Plum Tree at her forever home, and berries, and rhubarb. Oh, and asparagus. I looked wide-eyed at the group. I was the only one reacting. Everyone else had already seen the correlations. Nevermind how the mother was delighted by a big kitchen and a dishwasher and pocket doors and an open floor plan good for kids running in circles and an extremely long bathroom counter to easily accommodate the whole family brushing teeth elbow to elbow and then some. But my home has the little girls' whole wish list. And more! Why there was a "secret door" uncovered when I insulated the basement walls which led out of the house into the garden shed, and there is a robin nest with three blue eggs on the cross beam under the deck, and a strawberry bed out front, and a million stairs to the front door for children to color with chalk.
"It was hidden?" The young father asked about the door uncovered in the basement.
Yes! I said. It was a short 3/4 door sealed shut and covered by paneling, and I had them open it up and cut the concrete to install a door as large as the foundation would allow - still shy of standard.
"So hobbits lived here then?" he mused.
The eight year old explored the odd little shed built against the house and under the deck with delight at the idea of hobbits.
We said goodbye and they made their way down the long driveway of what (I believe) we all believe will become their "forever" home.
I suspect a call may come in the next few days with an offer and I can see the horizon of being able to return to Fabio in Belize. But I realize that even if they Don't call to offer - due to some advice from the advisor, or a parent balking at money, or a sudden move to Maine or fear of hobbits - one family dearly loved my house and it lifted my spirits, which had sunk low. I wondered why no call had come from the expensive ad I placed in the paper. I wondered if the market was still too bad to sell. I wondered if maybe no one wants houses built in 1960 with just one bathroom not three. And I wondered where the money is going to come from to replace the roof before winter... God bolstered my courage.
This week when I wrote Fabio an email about waking up after stressful dreams and feeling discombobulated and afraid, he didn't tell me "don't let it bother you" or try to convince me of positives, he told me to trust God.
"Just rest in Jesus' arms, He will tell you exactly how to handle things," he wrote.
How beautiful. Che bello. That's how you don't just sell a house - make it happen, and hope you get your money out. But how you bless a family with just the house they were looking for down to pocket doors and expansive counter space and blackberries others might dig out as weeds and asparagus dormant but sprouts the summer a little girl is coming to see it, and for secret closets... for so many things we can't humanly match, yet God delights to do. He delights to answer the heart yearnings of little eight year olds and young 30 year olds and 50 and 60 and 90-year olds. In the God scenario, still the house is sold and if you get your money out, or more, it's His blessing (and if you don't...it's still all good. For other reasons. That's another post...) But in the God scenario, there is so much more because you trusted and rested and believed. And God has such latitude to work in our lives when we trust and rest and believe.
When Jesus asked his motley crew of followers if they wanted to leave Him as the masses were doing, Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed...” John 6.68-69
I am pondering tonight the amazing intricacy of how God works in our lives and weaves our paths together with significance and blessing and love when we believe and trust. How He loves to please us, how He delights in our gratitude, how He reveals Himself to humanity in the smallest details and blessings in life. And how the best conduit for that revealing is a life resting in Him. Who could have imagined a tree that no one even remembered, that seemed to be half dead, could be revived and bear fruit and be the very dream a little girl was hoping for? I just think that's beautiful. And I think of all of the ways we are like a plum tree...seemingly forgotten, half dead. God cuts out the dead wood year after year (it may feel like merciless pruning) and we revive and we bless. And our existence matters.
In awe...whether the call should come or not.
Susan
