Sweeping the wooden floor.

The new broom has a spot to hang in the stairwell leading down to the basement in the Urban Farmhouse. I've never had an actual spot for a broom. At The Loft, my last home in the old mill building there were no closets or doors (well, a door for the bathroom) and so the broom got stuck in a corner.

In the Bungalow, the home I lived in for 9 years in the tiny 900 square feet of home, I tucked the broom on the side of fridge. When we moved into the bungalow, so many years ago, a little boy then growing inside my belly, I had more dreams for that house than I could get on paper. I started a little book of all the things I wanted to do inside of that home.

I went to Home Depot once and found these little samples of a bamboo floor that you could take. I took a few. Then went back for more. When we moved into the Bungalow, the last owners had a giant fish tank that had left a water stain all over the wooden floor. So we painted the floor. White. It was gorgeous but impossible to clean. So I dreamt of putting in this bamboo floor as I lined up the pieces of sample flooring as if I was learning to install boards. 

The bamboo floor never happened. There.

When I met Dave and we went to his home in New Hampshire, in the bedroom was a bamboo floor, just like the samples I had lined up along my floor, so many years ago. I told him the story of my bamboo samples. He told me that he put in the floor just for me. He knew I was coming to him.

Today I was sweeping the wide dark floor boards in the Urban Farmhouse, seeing all the floors I have swept before in my mind and how over time we learn all the spots that catch dirt or the way somehow all the dust piles and swirls in corners. I am learning these floors as I collect the dirt that sticks to our bare feet at night as we fall into bed.

As I sweep I think about how I manifested this home, these boards, the wood stove in my bedroom, the window over the sink in the kitchen. As my place of safety for my family and for me. Each pile of dirt I collect becomes a little meditation. I hear him talking on the phone and I know he is walking around me but I am lost in the movements of the broom, quieting my mind. The ritual of cleaning cathartic and familiar. 

I hang the broom back in its spot. In the kitchen are a few potatoes in a bowl and my body wants to cook. To feel the knife in my hand and smell the garlic. Olive oil, onion, garlic. The red potatoes cut into little squares covered now in paprika and cumin and crunchy bits of sea salt.

The meditation of the broom always leads to the next. The smell spreads around the house. He is behind me, "Babe, are you ready to talk?"

The night before our communication hurt and we are learning how to say sorry. How to wait out the anger before saying more. How to love and give space through the pain neither wishes to give to the other, but we still do.

I turn down the flame under the potatoes now crisping up. I go into the living room and pick up a blanket to fold. We sit down together and I look at the boards making up the floor, peeking out from under the red rug. I remember why I am here, in this home. Why I manifested it for us. Why it is my safety right now.

My hand is over his heart. The place where he is learning to feel truth. Truths that can't live any where but the center of our heart and faith, that feeling place that most were never taught to speak from. Truths that fight with the head, the words that try to hold onto the past, the stories that fear wins.

And the truths that make no sense inside logic. Truths like putting in the floor I had been dreaming of before he knew me, for me. How I knew what his name would be and when we would meet, before I knew him, because I knew he was coming.

The truth of now knowing someone so intimately after learning them, practicing with them, taking the time to sweep away their dirt and dust so that the minds can quiet and the hearts can open and just be together. 

We are holding hands. I rub his arm. A few tears pass down my cheek.

"This is going to be a newsletter isn't it?"

"Hopefully."

I am in the kitchen again cracking eggs in hot oil. The floor under my feet swept, smooth, cool. The rain has started to make little pings of sound all over the house.

I flip the eggs over, find the ketchup from the fridge and listen as his feet walk across the floor, the floor that I will sweep over and over, calming my mind, collecting the dirt and dust, living in the beauty of knowing something so intimately. And loving hard. Deep. Strong.