How dreamy!

We looked at a home today: beautiful, in Kailua, near the elementary.  Not such a great price, and not quite finished yet either. The landlord was helping me imagine my perfect studio on the back lanai, which was not yet constructed, although promised in the next two weeks. There is also to be a pergola all along the back (not so distant) fence.  It was a great dream she and I were having, but my husband wasn't having any.  He looked at me a bit sideways as I ooo d and aaah d as I turned every corner.  Of course she loved our credit score and the bio trev gave her.  I thought for sure I could make up the extra five hundred dollars a month with a complete studio on the premises and my children all at the same school, in walking distance and the Kailua's year-round farmers market so close also.  It was a grand life I imagined leading there  in that scarcely finished but beautiful house.  Have I told you yet it was BEAUTIFUL?   I was a bit offended when my husband didn't believe in this dream of mine.  So I began to look for ways out, ways not to be mad at the poor guy.  Well,  it isn't exactly  finished and what if it isn't finished in a timely manner, or never finished at all.  And the backyard will have no privacy until the pergola is finished AND covered with vines.   Didn't I  notice the dirt was all turned up in several places too?  It will be all over our ten feet and all over my house! So, I can barely wait until tomorrow night.  We have high hopes for this property we have been waiting so long to see.  It sounds like it might be just right for us. Us meaning the family.  I have no clue whether or not it will work for my pottery.   The landlord is old, eccentric, and too afraid to give us the address ahead of time.  Neither could she meet us at any earlier time.  So we've been holding out, well not really.  We haven't found anything, before today, we were happy with.  I'm just glad HE'S the picky one.  He always holds out and finds the greatest places.  But I'm not so sure I can hold out as long as him this time. God help me!

Well, we're here!

As of yet, I have no pottery in paradise, let alone a home for my family and school for my children. Myfamily and I arrived in Honolulu late last Friday night. Some old friends surprised us at the air port. When one placed a woven tuberose lei around my neck, I thought "oh, Hawaii, how I missed you." We are now settled into little apartment above our hosts garage, in the beloved valley of Manoa. Because we're on the second story, we live among the tree tops. The apartment is fully furnished, with all our comforts provided for, and breezy sheer curtains at every window. This is our long awaited return to O'ahu. We left suddenly in 2008 after, what now most assuredly appears to have been, my nervous breakdown. I was undone, I was like a child, I was a zombie mommie! My life was a swirling puzzle: how do I get the spoon, milk, bowl, cereal, chair and child to the table all at the same time? But I was free!!! When you can't do much of anything, you aren't expected to do much at all! So as I grew strong again, I added things back into my life in the order of my choosing! Before I could do much of anything though, the only way to make it from one impossible day to the next, was to CREATE. The combination of my fidgetty hands and my intense imagination, made the pain bearable. So I began to let myself make something new each day. I grieved every day, cried and did my best to comfort myself and process the traumatic events which left me so. . so. . desperate. But with plenty little people around to love me, a faithful though frightened husband, and my newfound freedom, I managed to wait on my healing and recovery. Making things had always been my way of life, as child, student, wife and mother. As a child I was constantly making and remaking, putting this with that to make a one-of-a-kind thing-a-ma-jig just right for whomever I chose to bless with it. Honestly, I never tucked that part of myself away. I just really underestimated it. I hadn't realized this was what I had to give the world. I swept it under the carpet and looked to God for more, for something more important, something "more grown-up". It seems growing up has taken me back to my childhood, back to Hawaii and set me free!