Of marriage and home repair

A few weeks ago, my husband, Matt, and his dad spent close to 10 hours replacing siding, interior and exterior wood trim and shutters on the side of our house. As he cleaned up, he did so knowing he wasn’t finished — he’d have to spend more precious weekend hours caulking around the new wood, painting it, then probably doing the whole process again at a later date on another portion of the house. 

Like so many of you, we live in a typical 1950s Homewood bungalow, one that’s full of both charm and headaches. Matt and I have spent considerable time re-caulking around tubs and cracks as the house shifts, adding more weather-stripping to keep unwanted heat and cold out of the house, and filling holes under the kitchen sink to keep out other types of unwanted “guests.” It’s a constant process, but it’s worth it because we love our town, our neighborhood and our street. We deal with the headaches because we don’t want to leave.

This month marks 10 years of living in our house. If you’d told me when we moved in that 10 years later, we and our two children would still be living in what we intended to be our pre-children “starter” home, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

This month also marks 10 years of marriage for me and Matt. Just as we’ve learned to be attentive to little cracks and shifts, leaks and drips in our house, we’re also attentive to those things in our marriage. In the day-in, day-out busyness of living, working, raising kids, cooking meals, cleaning up, and wiping tears and bottoms, it can be easy to just keep pushing forward, passing like ships in the night, occasionally squeezing in a short conversation before we both collapse in bed and fall asleep. But just like old houses, marriages require work, energy and attention. We often feel like our attention is all used up, but the marriage — the relationship — is the foundation that everything else is built on. If it’s not strong at its core, nothing else will be.

At the end of the day, our house isn’t perfect, but then again, neither are we. Actually, the house is a fairly good representation of who we are as a couple and a family. Our floors aren’t perfectly level, our interior doors don’t always close right and yes, we occasionally have snakes in our backyard. But, the house is cozy, warm in the winter, cool in the summer, a soft place to land at the end of the day when all is quiet. Here we are, 10 years in and we have more laughter than tears, more love than anxiety, more hope than distress. Here’s to many more decades— not necessarily all spent in this house, but hopefully not too far away from the spot where we began.

I’d love to connect! Email me at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com or find me on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.