On Thursday, my 14-year-old daughter, Paige, announced that several of her friends would be coming to our house to get ready for the football game on Friday night.
I just stood there, doing that strange smile moms do at 14-year-olds who are telling you their 14-year-old plans.
It’s a smile that is happy to hear the 14-year-old making plans with friends,
but that is also trying to figure out all the logistics they never seem to think about to make it happen.
My first thought when she told me was that we live in a one-bathroom house.
It has been a miracle of God that we have survived with our own 4 girls here for the last 8 years, so adding multiple extra with makeup and straightening irons was going to be a feat of the highest order.
I wish I got paid every time that door got banged on by someone over the years.
It’s a wonder the wood hasn’t been worn paper-thin.
I was thinking about all the shrieking, and all the doing of hair.
I was thinking about my husband, who works at 2:45 am every morning,
and who would need to get in there to get ready for bed.
I was thinking of him deep breathing, and asking things like, “How much longer could they POSSIBLY need in there?!”
When I expressed all of this to her, though, she started to beg.
“Please, Mama. PLEASE. We all want it! Everybody was asking if we could please get ready here!”
This is where I must tell you that every single one of these friends has money.
A lot of money.
Like, koi ponds and private vineyards kind of money.
Houses with big fancy pools and gardens set up in the California hills money.
But, noooo.
She insisted.
Our mouse house was the request.
When we moved to this house 8 years ago, it was a major stretch.
We were moving from a giant house a town over with absolutely no yard at all.
The “yard” was a small concrete slab, but the inside had three bathrooms, a two-person soaker tub, and a walk-in closet that could have been a bedroom itself.
I wanted the outdoors, though.
I’m a country girl.
I wanted them to be raised in a place where they could ride their bikes without fears of someone grabbing them,
so we toured this house together, and I said, “What do you think? Can we make it work?”
And we did.
We sold half our belongings, though, to make it happen.
It was emotionally draining to watch people drive off with half my life in the backs of trucks,
but I kept focusing on what we would be gaining by living here.
A dead-end street, redwood trees, close to good schools, within walking distance to town.
This house is so small, though, that you can vacuum the entire house and you never have to unplug the vacuum from where you first plugged it in.
You can hear every conversation, every snore, and every attempt to stifle tears.
You’d better be comfortable being close to people, or you will hate it here.
Since moving here, though, the outside is now a beautiful garden.
My husband is a gardener with a knack for true transformation.
Now there are butterflies, bees, and birds everywhere.
There are owls that live in the tree right outside my window, and every night I can hear them.
Flowers and jasmine bushes, vegetables in boxes, barrels, and bins.
There are animals everywhere:
Five cats, a dog, we even hand-raised a steer.
We have a mini graveyard for all the pets we have lost, as well.
A beloved dog, a bob-tailed cat, a hamster, two rabbits, and a guinea pig.
We had full funerals with speeches for each of them.
You can smell wisteria as you walk down the back trail.
It is wisteria from my oldest daughter’s wedding that we planted over the wedding arch that my dad had lovingly built.
We’ve hung lights up outside that we turn on every night just to add a welcoming feel.
When I stand on the back deck and look out, or up at the spray of stars above me,
I don’t feel like I gave up anything, actually.
I feel like we have only gained here.
Still, there have been times when I take Paige to drop her off at birthday parties of her friends that I look around at their houses and, for a moment, feel like what we have here is less than.
But then there was this request…
A handful of girls with trust funds and vacation homes want to be here.
They want to come to the tiny house where the windows glow with amber light, and they are met with candle and soup smells.
The house that is full of voices and music,
and where the sound of a toddler running on the hardwood next door is not at all rare.
They want to come to a house that feels tucked in by flowers and wildlife, and by wind chimes that ring low in the wind.
You can see the stars here.
You can be yourself here.
Life happens here.
Love is here.
When they were small, and we were preparing to move here, we did it because we wanted them to grow up safe and secure, and that is exactly the life that they got.
I hoped one day we’d be this exact home:
The one people wanted to come to.
I smile, realizing that we DO have it all.
Money could never buy a feeling.
I wanted to give them less house and more HOME,
and that is just what I did.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
