ode to the cottage

the walls absorb our laughter and music. the candles and light bulbs illuminate to me their faces, the thin skin beneath their eyes, and the wrinkles around the corners of their mouth. the random assortment of chairs and stools hold our weight and we rest out elbows against the table top as we talk and share and argue. i step past bodies to cross the room, and as i do, i brush past precious friends. they congregate here, in the cottage. i set food out; beg them to eat. the guitars and ukulele and tambourine come out soon and someone starts the song.

this cottage is small--tiny, really. and friends fill up all the spaces, beds, desks, floor and chairs. and this is where i've come to know them. that's what i want, in it. to know what made them who they are. i want to know who they are. what matters to their heart. where they are in their journey to abba. how they met Him. and as we talk, we pour out our souls and our love and we build each other up into strong pillars. like bricks on bricks their words have strengthened and built me.

there are moments when i sit back and just watch. and the joy fills me the way they have filled our cottage.

i am home.

i love those three words.

the cottage is in a dingy, 4-story building built around the time my grandmother was born. every day, i walk through the front double doors, and across the dappled blue vinyl floor to the stairs. emily and i live on floor 3.

it smells the worst on the weekends, when people are home long enough to cook. there is no ventilation in the entire building, so all the stale food odors hunker down in the stairwell and the front entry way. even though it is a all-female dorm, several men in their 60's live here too, remnants of rent control. they kindly hold the doors for us and say hello on the stairs.

visitors complain about the clanking sounds from the heating system that fill the old walls but i find the banging a little soothing. the cottage is crotchety and unique. and for almost a year, i get to call it home.

i guess you could say i have many different homes.