I was at my sister's house in Iowa a couple of weeks ago. It is the size of a small farm, and has much the look and feel, but it is not. Her husband is one of the local doctors instead. When they moved to the town seventeen years ago they found the land almost right away, then designed their own farmhouse from what I think was a modified magazine plan and put it on top of a windswept hill. Then they went about the business of producing and raising their nine children.
In those early days I had no fondness for their place. I love urban life, so the pace of the place was all wrong to me. It also takes a significant effort to get there, which I have yet to find to be a charming part of the process. At least as important, however, is that I didn't love the house nor the land. They did; they invested in it and thought about it and wanted it. But I thought the house was hastily put up and had no character, the hill barren, and the small woods and pond in the back too isolated from daily life.
Over the years the family grew and the house grew with it. The attic above the garage was expanded and turned into a dormitory for the boys. Three barns were added, one at a time, to house cars and tools and equipment and horses. Fences were put up, a garden laid, trees planted. On this visit they showed me their replaced main staircase, with some nice wainscoting and custom iron railings. My sister loves it. And we talked about possible changes to come -- an expanded dining room, maybe a wing for a grandfather to live in.
It was the same place. And yet different. Just as in the future it would most likely be the same place, though different yet again.
Iowa Barn, 2013
I came for the graduation from high school of two of my nephews, but to be honest I needed no reason. I had been eager to return. Where I used to dread heading to Iowa, it now feels like going home. My parents separated long ago, and both have moved several times since, so their homes are not my childhood homes anymore. My sister's home now represents the stable core to which I will hopefully return for many years to come. They aren't going anywhere. What I once found constricting I now find comforting.
On one of my constitutionals around the property, I paused to ponder one of the walls on one of the barns. It's a nothing structure, not one of those majestic Midwestern barns but closer to a simple, functional shed. What I noticed, though, is how it made a bit of a composition with the neighboring structures and how it was beginning to weather. It was no longer the new structure it was just a few years ago, too shiny and too clean and too isolated. I imagine my sister and her family see just an aging barn, and one that might need maintenance to boot. But what I saw was her and her family and the years they have spent there, and how it had become their home, and how it all looks much more loved and lived in than I ever imagined possible. I also saw me, now happy to return to a place for which I never thought I would have much of a thought. And what I saw was all quite lovely indeed.