We bought our house at the peak of housing mania.  We were blending families and making new life and what we wanted was a house that could hold and make space for all.  We found an old beauty with lots of room and presence figuring that we could turn around and sell in in a few years once a new notion of family had been established.

Well, that was then.  Home sales have stalled and with it our blithe sense of being able to downsize.  For us, it is probably just as well because gone is the sense that we would only need the space for a few years.

Our children range in age between 20 and 28.  They come and they go and they come again and they stay and they go and they come back.

Turns out we need this space.  Last week we housed five of the six, provided a temporary idling place for in-between venturers, fed and slept and loved and savored the progeny the Holy one in all Her wisdom saw fit to send into our lives.

We send them out from this hulking blue launch site.  It is exhausting, for sure.  But being on the front lines to help them equip and venture is precious and rare.  The world awaits them.

And home is here to welcome them back.