Our Firsts

I'll never forget the day Ken and I bought our first house. It was a darling, tiny little hovel, full of mice, filth and literally thousands of roaches and water bugs (a nice term for monster-sized roaches). During our renovation of it, our good friend exterminator treated it seven times before we could move in, the worst infestation he had ever seen. To this day, I can abide a mouse way more than I can a roach. They are plumb evil, and I'm convinced they are part of the curse on Adam's original sin. Ugly, oily reminders that we need Jesus. 

What wasn't ugly was the sweet cottage waiting to be revealed under all the unsightly mess. We didn't have a clue how to fix that house up, but my Dad and a host of Ken's buddies helped us. We lived with my folks while we toiled over it. I was newly pregnant with our first child. The stress of remodeling a house, living with my parents out of a suitcase and being newly pregnant stretched our wits to their very end. I had been a compliant, easy-going wife up until then. Ken didn't quite know what to do with this half-crazy, hormonal woman who emerged from the chaos. 

Several hair-raising months later, we finally moved in. The house was as cute as a daisy -- light yellow with green shutters and white trim, cherry red cabinets in the kitchen gleaming (a cobbled-together repurposing of various mismatched finds which came together delightfully when I applied paint and new porcelain knobs), charming wallpaper with red cherries and yellow lines, fresh paint everywhere and a newly-trimmed yard by KenLawn. He's good. We were exhausted and so grateful for all the help and new knowledge. The day we moved in, we plopped on the couch with a collective sigh and counted the days until our baby arrived.

I loved our yard. We had a little garden and beautiful green grass. Our property backed right up to the railroad tracks. We would sit in our swing and watch all the unusual trains go by. It took us maybe a week to get used to the whistles, and then we simply took them for granted. The months passed and my tummy grew to extraordinary proportions. I knew in my heart that he was a boy and that he was huge. I would sit in the swing when Ken was at work, trying to imagine how our world would change when our little big man came. I would talk to him, patting my tummy, dreaming about what he would look like, what he would sound like, trying to imagine how I could love him any more than I already did.

He finally arrived, two weeks late and big as a lumberjack. 10 pounds, 8 ounces, wailing like a Banshee. The day we took him home, my heart trembled in fear. This Jon-boy was my dream, but I despaired of how to raise him, how to do all the things that he needed. I wanted to repeat the good things that my parents did in raising us, but felt poorly equipped to do that. One morning, soon after coming home, he was crying and I was crying. I was holding that man-child in the rocker, trying to figure out what to do to soothe him. It seemed like the long road in front of me was fraught with failure and despair. Then I looked deep into those sweet, bunny-blue eyes and began to sing a lullaby to him. "Jesus Loves Me" and then "Tell Me Why." He stopped crying and snuggled right up onto the crook of my neck.  Our little shelter, full of love and humanness, was ready to hold us, just as I clung tightly to my dear baby. It was all going to be okay.