You might not expect it, a month out from my most recent loss – I certainly didn’t – but while driving home from work yesterday I realized that I am… content. My sunroof was open on my car, which always makes me happy because I have a car – after years of having to share a vehicle I still get excited every morning I go out and hop into my own car. The sun was out, it was warm enough for me not to have to wear a sweater or jacket. And the trees are green.

Driving through this area almost always makes me smile because of the trees. (Not the traffic I assure you – there are as many assholes on the road here as anywhere else.) The cities around here have made a very obvious effort to plant trees lining the streets, and as they grow bigger they start to overhang the streets a little, creating a beautiful green canopy. There are parks with trees and yards with trees, and everywhere is this bursting of color right now. Where I grew up there was so much new development, and they would inevitably bulldoze a huge section of the landscape to build their packed-in-tight half a million dollar townhouses. It was so freaking depressing. But this area, it doesn’t have that population explosion… it has been here for hundreds of years and will be here for hundreds more, growing only slowly.

I get a lot of people asking me if I miss home. And I do, in some ways. I miss the familiarity. I miss the house I grew up in. But what I miss most is the family I left behind, not the place. Frequently people will suggest to me in a supposed-to-be-comforting manner that maybe in the future the opportunity will present itself for me and my family to move back to Canada. The thing is, I don’t think I would, even if we got the chance.

When I first moved here I really didn’t feel like this house was my home. I lived here, but it was someone else’s home… not even my husband’s, he had just moved in a year and a half before and hadn’t been able to do much to it since. It was so overwhelming to even really picture this place feeling like my home. It was dark and depressing, broken and outdated. It didn’t need a makeover, it needed some severe reconstructive surgery.

I’ve been here for four years now. We have painted and re-done the living room, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom. We built an entertainment room in the unfinished basement. We’ve torn out overgrown bushes of all sorts, cut down trees, planted new ones. It’s been a lot of hard work. It’s cost money. And it has been very, very slow. Many things need finishing trim, painted ceilings and new furniture still. But slowly I can see the change. I walk into the living room and it is my living room. I lay down in my bedroom. I can see what this house will become, and I am excited. I am motivated.

This year we are able to do a lot of the things to the house that we always wanted to, but couldn’t afford – I am working full-time, we have a lot more income than we used to. It definitely holds a shadow over it. When I mention to people what we are working on, the new door, the new fence, refinishing the floor, rebuilding the stairs… I know they are probably thinking that I am lucky to be able to do all those things. And we are. But I didn’t want to be working full-time right now. I was supposed to be staying home with our baby, keeping an eye on the budget and putting off house projects until later. Now we are able to do all these things we wanted to do, and I know it will be really nice to have them done before raising a child in this house…. but we would have been fine without them. Once in a while I will catch what could be an imagined look of jealousy on someone’s face, and I almost want to laugh sadly and say, you have no idea, I would trade you in an instant.

But I am proud of what we do have and try to enjoy it. I gave up putting my life on hold to wait. We will do as much as we can until the next baby comes along, and then we will continue the original plan. This helps pass the time, and helps give something positive about every month spent waiting – it’s another month worth of income and time to throw at our projects. Another month to make this our own.