first days

This is my first day coming home from work to my new house. I’m as excited as if I were going home to a new love—which, I suppose, I am.

I expected to love this house; there wouldn’t have been much point in buying it otherwise. But I hadn’t expected to love it so passionately, to walk around and admire each detail and feel so deeply at home there. If anything, I expected that the first days in the new house would be a let down, marred by overly-high expectations and the clear knowledge of all the work yet to come. But that’s not my experience at all. Instead, I have something of the delight and surprise of Harry Potter when he first discovers he can make things happen with his magic wand. We have used tools other than magic, but the result is the same: we have made this house happen. I admire the new layout and know it was my idea. I admire the clever lofts in the kids’ rooms and know that one came from Robyn. The dropped kitchen ceiling which enables the lovely upstairs hideaway? that was Keith. The pendant lights were copies of the ones Michael fell in love with on our trip to Wanganui. The colours were picked out by the kids. Everywhere the house is about us. And even though it has taken months of work (and money) to bring it to fruition, it feels like we blinked our imagination into a reality.

And there are unexpected surprises, mostly at night. I had pictured the view from the kitchen window as I washed the dishes—had fantasised about it since I first stepped in that house more than a year ago. But I hadn’t thought about how pitch black the back yard would be, how many stars I would see when I stepped outside and looked up. And I’ve thought long and hard about the view from my bedroom at sunset, but I hadn’t thought about how at night the walls would disappear—even the windows go missing with all the lights off—and how it would feel like I was sleeping outdoors: the rhythmic pounding of the sea, the twinkling of the streetlights below us, Orion keeping watch over me as I sleep. It feels like a precious gift has been entrusted to me for a time, and I have the responsibility to cherish it for as long as it is in my life. And I think I’m fully up to the challenge.

Still, the house is not really finished. My dad bit into Chips Ahoy cookies one day years ago and gave me a big smile, “Almost good enough to eat!” he said, reaching for a second. That’s how my house is: almost done enough to live in. Last night, after grouting the laundry room floor, I soothed my cramped back in our new tub. The tub sits in an unfinished bathroom, with a wall-hung vanity that has no tapware, and bare gib (= drywall) walls. The future-recessed lights hang from a wire, awaiting the painting of the ceiling to be fully installed. The water emerges into the tub from a plain pipe, the tub spout having been misplaced or not delivered. There is a handle to turn on the water that sticks out of the gib. The button above the handle is circled with pencil and highlighted with a stern warning: **Please do NOT push this button!!** It has been everything I can do not to push it. Still, after I washed the plaster dust and construction detritus out of the tub, I ran myself a bubble bath. The first tub I’ve ever picked out, it’s long, deep, and sloped to hold my body perfectly. Dave has stuffed the cavity with insulation so that it stays hot longer. And, like everything else in my house, it is as close to perfection as an unfinished thing could be. This whole house is like a bubble bath in paradise.