of Ownership

We almost lost our home last year; the last 3 years, actually.

The 7 years previous we lived here I lived in my grandparent's house.  This house.  The house we would have lost if not for the perseverance and persistence of my husband.

I feel like this house became my house, our house, two weeks ago when a good, patient and kind friend helped me with the gardening.  Unconnected, unemotional and with a keen sense of organized and orderly garden she asked, "So what are you going to do with that azalea?"  She meant this one:

The azalea planted by my grandmother that sat among 3 other azaleas which are now gone because they choked from neglect, blocking the statue of Mary that she placed there.  My friend was helping me plant some of her garden "extras" in that space.

Nothing.  I'm not planning to do anything with my grandmother's azalea.  On the other side of the Mary garden is the overgrown, under-maintained lilac tree...well, should be a lilac bush but it's a tree at this point.  My friend pointed out it needed to be pruned.  She googled how to prune it properly, gave me directions and we set forth to the next massacre....er, I mean, garden inspection. " It's so sad", I would comment.

After she agreed with my husband that the overgrown, mostly non-blooming rhododendrons in the front should be hacked I sadly shrugged and relented.

"Ok, what's with the emotional connection to the foliage?"

Well, it's just that it's my grandmother's house and I almost lost it.  The walls are still primered, the third floor banister still doesn't have spindles.  The third floor is still not "finished."  All the foliage was planted, cultivated, pruned, cared for by her.  Not me.  I stink at that stuff.  I've been so preoccupied with mothering in an unattainable perfect way that I have neglected the house...and have turned my sight from the landscape because of my lack of experience and mostly my fear of trying anything.

My friend, knowingly or unknowingly, counseled me that this is my landscape and to prune some of the overgrown "stuff" and even to replace some of it was .....something or other.....I'm sure it was something about honoring my grandmother....because at that statement, "this is your house" was all my brain heard.  I wanted to weep.  Yes, weep...I'm not trying to be melodramatic, I really had to control it.

After 10 years of residing in Mom-Mom's and Pop-Pop's house and after 3 years of battle with the bank to keep the house that was my father's home after my grandparents died, it's finally mine.  It's ours.  It's my husband's and my home and the place where the kids will always know their home to be.

So I hacked the hell out of the lilac tree yesterday.