Load-bearing Walls and Practical Husbands

Several years ago, on a trip back from visiting family, my husband looked over at me as I was barreling down the highway towards home. I was in a rush to get home. I had to get away from the white farm houses, open fields, tree-lined drive-ways, and red-painted barns. While Texas is home to me, and I now can't imagine not being here, the landscape of where we grew up is forever etched into my heart, and sometimes the stark contrast is especially painful.

"Do you want to move back?"

He asks me this question every now and then. My answer is always a resounding, "No," and it was that day too. A bit of a tear sprung to my eye, and I said, "This isn't about moving. I just wish I could throw snowballs and watch my kids jump in the leaves." (You midwesterners have no idea what you're taking forgranted.)

I remember that conversation because he asked me what I did want then, and I told him I'd think about it. So I did. Many days later, I presented him with my plan. Several acres in the country. I can't farm a lot of animals since my health wouldn't allow it, so I'd like to raise chickens and grow blackberries, pumpkins, and Christmas trees to sell. A real country house. Complete with a woodburning cookstove, some woods out back for the boys to roam in, a pond for them to fish in, and a long clothesline for all my quilts to dry on.

Well.

To say he shut me down flat would be the understatement of 2009 and we're just getting started. You might say where we live now is The Great Compromise. A small vegetable garden, a few chickens, and a fish pond beneath the kitchen windows are a far cry from the plan I carefully drew up and presented with a flourish and hopeful grin several years ago, but then they're also a step in the right direction from the postage stamp lot and stark, suburban life I felt chained to five years ago. Sometimes the progress is achingly slow, but it is progress.

Not too long ago, my husband came home to find me standing in the kitchen with an evil grin on my face.

"I've been thinking," I mused.

"What's it gonna cost me?" he asked fearfully.

Our oldest son is 14. His room is adjacent to the kitchen. I figure when he moves out, I'll call a contractor and have them take out the wall there, put in a slate floor, and install a wood cookstove for me. I'll throw down a big braided rug, bring in a comfortable rocker. Then, from the window where my son wistfully looked out and thought about his future as an adult and the world yet to be conquered, I'll sit by the fire and look out over my garden, watch my chickens peck in the yard, read a good book, and enjoy a simple, quiet life.

My husband rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then put his hands on his hips.

"Nope. No, I think that's a load-bearing wall. Yep, pretty sure that's a load-bearing wall there."

Load-bearing, schmoad-bearing. I think a stone pillar would look great with a slate floor, don't you?

And I noted, as I walked away smiling to myself, that as my husband tried to put a damper on my quiet little dreams, he was wearing cowboy boots and a flannel shirt. 10 years ago he would never have dreamed of putting on cowboy boots. Some things take time. That's all I'm saying.