big becomes little and little becomes big

it's april 22. almost four months exactly since christmas day. for four months we've been working through everything - the emotions, the insurance stuff, the reconstruction plans. for four months we've been looking out the front door of our rental house at the burned shell of our home.

we know we are so very lucky. still, it is something i have to remind myself of almost daily. i have to make a conscious choice to see the good, each and every day. it's like my logical self is on board - i mean, obviously, look at the overwhelming wave of love and support that has come our way in the aftermath. it's staggering, really. we've never even come close to not having a roof over our heads, clothing on our backs, and food on our table. in fact, as i have said before - even now, we have more than our share. even now, we have more than enough.

i am reminded of this each morning as i try to button my pants.

oops.

anyway, my emotional self is another story and that's where i have to make the conscious choice each day - because the deep and dark and negative seems to have this amazing pull. it's like an eddy, or what i imagine quicksand or a vortex would feel like. it could be so easy to surrender to it. so i have to fight it every day. i have to pick up my head and focus outwards, rather than in. easier some days than others.

we have selected a builder. it's such a huge relief. we had solicited bids from three, and kind of had a gut feeling about who we wanted from the very beginning - but went through the process for the sake of due diligence. in the end, we went with our guts. we made the decision just yesterday and confirmed it with our designer over the phone. she relayed the decision to the builder and he was out there today with a couple of his subs, evaluating this and that. we talked about the demo, how we need to go through the house one more time before they come take it down, and how we need to salvage any landscaping we want to try to salvage before demo day.

i mentioned that i thought it would be very emotional for me to see the house come down. our builder said "you guys should just go away for the weekend, go to fredricksberg or somewhere, and when you come back, there will just be a slab." jack likes this idea. i, of course, have mixed feelings. i see the value in the "poof!" approach, but part of me also wants to be with the house in its last moments, so as not to abandon it and also to give me the closure that i think i need. i told jack that it was very sad, that our house has a soul and that it is languishing, and dying a slow death. with all the gentle, heartfelt empathy he could muster jacko said "that's only in your warped world." god i love that man. he helps make my bigs things little.

recently, emmett came back from jamaica and brought me a little braided bracelet. very simple, bought from a street vendor. it's probably the type of thing that won't last too long - but it's become so precious to me. i don't ever want to take it off. then, last weekend we went to a WWII reenactment and i found a deer antler in the battlefield. i've been driving around with it in my car for 4 days now. this has got me wondering - what the heck is going on on my warped world? why am i developing these deep attachments to the simplest little things? over time, it's actually gotten easier to detach from the material things we lost on christmas day. so why now these exaggerated attachments?

part of what makes some otherwise unspectacular, ordinary little things in my life have meaning (and therefore immeasurable value) are the memories that the little things evoke. for example, that's what makes losing the christmas ornaments so difficult. i bought each of the kids a christmas ornament every year since they were born. the idea i had back when they were tots was that when they moved out on their own (a concept that is rapidly settling in) i would be able to set them off with a starter set of 25 or so ornaments representing every phase of their lives. the little hallmark ornament that i found one year when emmett was about 2 - it was a little puppet stage with tiny puppets - in and of itself may not have had much value (about $7.95, if i recall). but the memory of toddler emmett walking around for weeks saying "puppet area" is a cherished one. we would ask him "what are you saying?". he'd look at us as if we were daft: "puppet area!". we'd say "puppet area?" and he'd say "no!!! _puppet_area_." to this day we have no idea what he was saying, but that puppet ornament took on such meaning for me because it would bring me back to that precious time at least once a year when we unpacked the christmas ornaments to decorate the tree, even now almost 15 years later.

there were many little things like that throughout the house - of insignificant value to those not in the know, but possessing a world of meaning for us. so the sadness i feel is not so much over the physical loss of the little things, but it's representative of the fear i have over losing the memories tied to those little things. and so emmett's little jamaican bracelet, and the deer antler found in the field last weekend, take on extreme importance as i try to attach them to new memories.

big becomes little, and little becomes big.