We began watching the wind when we got the dashed-off email from our daughter-in-law Kelly before they came over to celebrate grandson Benjamin’s seventh birthday.
“So... random thought....and crazy thought.... Would y'all ever in a million years consider living with us? This house has a two bedroom apartment attached with beautiful kitchen, etc. It's probably a crazy idea but I do think about it from time to time....I know you love your house though and sharing walls with our chaos is probably not enticing. Just throwing it out there but feel free to throw it back :)”
She attached a link to a house with a mother-in-law wing. (Don’t ask me why they use mother-in-law and not father-in-law, but the listings all seem to do it this way.) This was the first I knew about her peculiar hobby of trolling real estate listings even though she hates to move.
Strangely, in the text for the adult Sunday school class I would teach the next Sunday was Ecclesiastes 11:4, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant: whoever watches the clouds will not reap.” I’ve had the verse on my bulletin board for about fifteen years as a reminder that writers must get past all that could go wrong or they would never send out their work. I’m usually not all that into signs and omens, but this coincidence seemed somehow similar to the triple rainbow I saw ahead of us when we initially made the move to Hattiesburg.
So we checked the wind and the clouds as we looked at pros and cons and came up with more possibilities of breezes and sunlight than stormy weather. When Kelly didn’t even flinch in giving me permission to use the sun room that connected the two homes for my office, I was sold.
As things worked out, that first house had issues that produced anxiety, but Kelly had not given up her hobby. She found an eight-acre property that suits us all even better with a main house (theirs), a guest house (ours), a workshop (the men), a she shed (mine for writing, with space for boy visits), on eight acres (for trees, flowers, birds, butterflies, strolling, etc.). In a bit of irony – or maybe another omen? – the address is on Windwood Trace.
Thus, we move out today to the new place at the end of a quarter mile dirt lane with our baby son (and you know the reputation of the family baby – whether earned or not), the daughter-in-law (with admittedly crazy ideas), two lively little boys who might show up in their pajamas, two rambunctious dogs, and a couple of Shetland ponies who come as uninvited guests, having found a hole in their fence. What could possibly go wrong?
