We bought our big, old house in hopes that someday we would have a family there, that our children would grow up looking at the plaster medallions, crawling along the old pine floors, and not falling down the enormous staircase. (About tasks that I will never get to, like leveling the rear of the house that has about a six inch difference between the highest and lowest points, I like saying, "My children's children will get to that.") I have spent a couple of years trying to minimize the risks of one hundred fifty years of lead paint, thinking to myself, while sanding, slathering caustic goo, burning myself with a heat gun, and then sealing the past away in a new fresh coat of paint, that I was doing it for my daughter, even before I knew that Nikki was pregnant.
Nikki and I have always longed for a home, a place for ourselves. When we were younger, in our early twenties right out of college, people would come to our apartment in Brooklyn and comment how "grown up" our house appeared.
But for all of our nesting, I had never felt the sense of place that comes with bringing your new born baby home to a house that you bought, labored over, secured, and readied just for her.
Here is a photo of that moment, on the threshold of our home for the first time, on the threshold of a new life.
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