Over two years ago we conspired over a series of meals and cocktails, forming our perfect plan for world domination to build the life we wanted.

I sold my condo and moved in with him, then he sold the big house later a year later and we eventually bought a loft. Part one of the plan: complete.

Part two proved considerably more difficult. How do you begin a collaborative painting on an empty canvas when one of you has an affinity for Romanesque and the other worships Dali? When one wants to buy 30 acres of land but can’t decide where or what it should look like (on the water or the side of a mountain with a view? North Carolina, Georgia?) and the other just wants to get. it. done.

One conversation at a time, during long road trips of knitting, podcasts, and debates that shouldn’t be engaged in when you’re trapped in a vehicle moving 70mph. I created a second blog with no links to this one, where we tracked our progress and posted ideas for the future.

We made an offer, we had a survey done, we rescinded our offer. We made another offer, we had an inspection done and we rescinded our offer. I fell in and out of love like a tween in heat. Each one “could be it!” became an annoying anthem, which could have only been worse if Celeine Dion had been the one singing it. I started thinking the blog and the conversations with friends were jinxing our plans – because you know that me talking caused that one house to have polybutylene pipes.

We changed our minds about where and when. We drew lines in the sand, set deadlines and missed them. We fell disheartened, discouraged, deranged. We had Sir Isaac Newton moments where we were clunked on the head with red apples shining from sea to sea – but were they Newton’s apples, or Adam and Eves?

Something happened new years eve as we were about to leave for the night that had us giddy and scouring real estate website search results for a particular area – we’d had an epiphany about where. Now: when? Things started to fall in as it should, as you could only hope and dream and wish for, as you can only truly appreciate when you’ve worked and looked and had your hopes dashed. Disappointment breeds gratefulness?

Less than two months later (last Thursday), we closed.

We’d found it – rather our agent found it for us. It’s a 1ac lot, not 30. It’s on a finger of a lake, not on the water itself and not off a goat trail. It’s in a gated community with a 24 hour guard, so he doesn’t have to worry when I go up by myself. There are 3 lakes for me to drop my kayak in. There are 30 miles of groomed trails for me to walk and run, there is a fundamental love and respect for nature there – where we’ve seen deer, grouse, turkeys and even a wolf on our visits. There are a number of other bits to be giddy about but mostly this: it’s ours.

We are (almost) officially city mice and country mice. Now we just have to decide on our cabbage (cottage + cabin) design and make that part happen. It could take the rest of our lives, but I doubt it…we’ve got momentum now.

In the last month, I’ve lost my step grandfather and my pseudo mother in law. It’s been both a heart wrenching and brilliantly beautiful couple of weeks – filled with unexpected trips (to Seattle and South GA) and family reunions. Brimming with celebrations of long lives, surrounded by unseasonably beautiful weather, and riddled with cloaked lessons.

“With every goodbye we go to seed again, this is how we come to make family from strangers, this is how we learn ‘always’, we are candles lit from each other.”

I’ve butchered a poem that held me enraptured in my teenage years, one that resonated with me and made my bones vibrate with an understanding of grief I didn’t realize anyone else was capable of. Here it’s like cheap beef stew meat in a styrofoam boat – still delicious but not nearly as much as if you’d been given the entire mess of meat to do admire.

Just the same, the words are still there. Sixteen years since I lost my mother, fourteen since I lost my father. Now I stand on the sidelines of life’s gymnasium – watching people I love find their rhythm in the dance of the mourning. I’m just the awkward girl with the glasses, the lazy eye and the ill-fitting dress, they’re the football quarterbacks trying to figure out what to do with their hands and attempting to look relaxed.

We all suck at this. We’re supposed to. It’s not supposed to be easy or come naturally, it’s supposed to ravage us and spin us around, and when we get our equilibrium back in check, when we can focus on the horizon again without tipping over, we’ll see a present there with pretty little bow.

If there’s one gift those I’ve/we’ve recently lost have graciously and silently granted, it’s their example of this: live. Work hard, and live the life you want to live.

Bill spent the last 20 years on a lake almost every day, fishing. He shared his passion and his love with his grandchildren, his friends, and his wife of 60 years. Karleen spent the last 16 years cooking, baking, visiting with friends and family, and driving her sister half mad (*giggle*). She died in the same house she was born in – the house her father built, on the farm he owned and worked, and it was exactly how she wanted it to be.

While I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the greedy “want” from the soul filling, world rewarding “want” and what that means for my actions, activities, hobbies, etc., I’ve found yet another quote to pin to my mental lapel (in hopes others will see it even without seeing it):

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.” – Ernst Fischer

Almost a year ago, we were packed like sardines on a ship of ignorant tourists that had a port of call at Labadee, Haiti.

I’m thinking about the people we interacted with that day, how beautiful the land was and how these commuters might be doing today.

I’m sure you’ve already given so I’ll spare you the guilt trip about it. Note: I have it on good authority that if you don’t give, every time you think you have to pee, you’ll instead have to push a cactus the size of an orange out of your hoo-hoo. Just sayin’.

Time alone on a quiet lake, cutting through the water in the silence and wind. Watery eyes that could be the result of the nip in the air or the happiness spilling out. Changing leaves marking the passage of time and showering you fairy tale style with another gust of wind.

Day trips to the mountains are such a tease.