There's No Place Like Home

The original house and garage

For those who don't know the backstory to my house, my great-grandfather built it in 1949, which means the grand dame turned the big 7-5 this year. It was originally a one-story-ish house with nothing but open land behind it. My great-grandfather would eventually sell the house to his daughter/my grandmother in the early sixties, and it would become the house where my dad was raised. Sometime in the early eighties, the house was completely reconfigured and a second story was added on, including a second bathroom, a master bedroom, and two spare bedrooms. The stairway was moved, windows were taken out and made into solid walls, rooms were added, etc.  I came along in the mid-eighties, so I only have memories of the second version of the house when the second story was already there.

My grandmother was incredibly fond of blue. Blue kitchen countertops, blue wallpaper border, blue carpet, blue curtains, blue couch, blue accent chairs, blue lamps, artwork with blue as the central color, blue-themed liners to drawers, blue siding. Just so much blue. Everywhere. Like her own version of Picasso's Blue Period, but more than half a century later and in the form of a house instead of a canvas.

I never paid attention to this fondness for blue as a child when my family would visit. I had no reason to. It wasn't until I bought the house for myself several years ago after she passed and thought, "Good heavens, how did I miss this OCEAN OF BLUE all these years?" I wouldn't be surprised if I cut open walls and found blue studs and blue cinder block.

I've slowly been updating the space and sending the many shades of blue on their way. I'm not trying to erase my grandmother's memory, but I am trying to eliminate remnants of her love of blue, one carpet fiber and one curtain at a time. The ocean of blue has evaporated considerably. The kitchen countertops are the last blue thing remaining. (But the kitchen is a giant project unto itself, so I will probably be living with those countertops for awhile.) 

When I first moved in, my grandmother was still alive but in assisted living. My brother and his girls had been living there for a period of time, but he was getting remarried and moving out. I ended up renting it from her (buying it wasn't on the table at the time) after my brother moved on, as my family did not want it just sitting empty and my grandmother's health was rapidly declining and the likelihood of her ever being in it again was slim. 

I never really thought much of the notion of owning a home. It wasn't high on the list of priorities or dreams in life. I was content to rent and had done so for a number of years. But I was also sick of sharing walls with other people, hearing screaming children, trumpeting trumpet players, pouncing cats and dogs,  and incessant Christmas music on loop. It took some time after I first moved in, but I was finally warming up to the notion of owning my own home.

So, when my grandmother passed in late 2021, my father inherited the house, and then turned around and asked if I would be interested in buying it. I was finally in a place mentally that I knew I wanted to buy it and be done with renting. All told, four generations of my family have owned it, and five generations have lived in it at one point or another. I remember when I bought it, I kept praying it would be a place of peace and retreat. 

I just didn't realize I would be the one who would need it to be a place of peace and retreat.

When everything went sideways in February, I moved in with my parents, for both safety and support. I was restricted from driving, so I couldn't go anywhere on my own, and with the seizures still happening, it wasn't really safe to be on my own anyway. I've been living with them ever since, and we all were fully anticipating I would be living with them until the end of treatment sometime next summer.

A more recent version of the house, but that 
blue siding is also gone now.

But by the grace, kindness, and faithfulness of God, I moved back into the house several weeks ago. Far, far sooner than any of us dreamed possible. 

I stood in the kitchen one day here recently, quietly in awe of how much had changed in just nine short months since the original diagnosis. I went from not being able to drive, living with my parents, and repeatedly having seizures to driving again, living on my own, and not having had any seizures since May 30.  I mean, I couldn't even cut up my own food seven months ago after the April surgery. I texted my parents shortly after moving back in and said, "You know I'm feeling overwhelmingly grateful when I thanked God this morning for blue kitchen countertops. 😂"

I have never been so grateful for the shade of my blue in all my life because of what it represents. The space feels so sacred to me now, to be back here in solitude and quiet. (Not that my parents were a bunch of crazy college kids partying it up every night. I've just lived on my own for a number of years and I like my space.) A place of peace and retreat from the mayhem of these last nine months.

Because it meant I was home, back in my own space, experiencing some sort of outrageous miracle. It has felt like one of the greatest gifts of my life to be independent again. Is there a long way to go still? You betcha. Does this mean I'm magically all better and the cancer is gone because I'm back on my own again? No way. 

But now, more than ever, I am acutely aware of the fact that there really is no place like home. 

Blue kitchen countertops and all.

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Functional updates
I'll try to carve out space in each post to provide updates on where I am in the process. So, if you're just here for the nuts and bolts, in the future you can slide straight here to the bottom and skip my idle wanderings above.

I continue to feel exceptionally well. I had an MRI on Sunday and discussed the results today with neuro oncologist. Nothing particularly notable in the scans, other than the size of the tumor is holding steady, which in my case is a good thing. Remember: the goal is not to eradicate the tumor (although, I'm certainly still praying for that to happen), or even for it to shrink. The goal is to stop the progression and stop it from growing into a more aggressive grade. He said today, "Your MRI's could look like this for the rest of your life, and I would be pleased."

Last week was my big work conference, and I am delighted to say that my brain was able to meet the demands of emails and phone calls we had coming in. Did I still have to slowly and methodically work through emails? Yes. I do have to read and then re-read both incoming and outgoing emails. If I get going too fast, I start to overlook things or misread sentences. (But hi, that's also just life.)

I'll have a little bit of a lag with starting round 4 of chemo because of the holiday and the conference disrupting when I should have had my MRI and monthly check-in, so I won't start that until next week.

This Thanksgiving will undoubtedly land differently this year. I am in awe of what God has done and is doing in my life. I will never be able to thank him enough. Happy Thanksgiving!

PS: Want to leave a comment? If you select "Anonymous," would you mind including at least your first name and last initial directly in the body of your comment? That way I know who you are!