Waking from a Noisy Dream

Anyone who's built a special home (or had a home built) has his own stories and memories, chock full of highs and lows. It definitely is one of those "life experiences" that challenges everything you've got..physically, emotionally and financially.

We'd heard it many times from friends who'd been there: "If your marriage can survive home-building, then it can survive anything." For Don and me, it was never hard on our relationship, although it was difficult on us individually...which certainly affected our moods from time to time.

I can't speak for him or know his feelings, but I can tell you what the completion of our house was like for me: waking up from a noisy, tumultuous, confusing, fragmented dream.

Those types of dreams are pretty common for me...they seem to run in my family, since my sister has vivid, detailed, crazy dreams too. There's always a lot going on, plenty of background noise, many voices, colors, etc., and I'm just sort of "there" in the middle of this kaleidescope. It's usually a relief to awaken, gradually, to a quiet bedroom and the comfort and stillness of consciousness in my own bed. Within minutes of waking, the memories of those noisy dreams have completely faded.

That's what it's like to be in this house now, enveloped in the present and totally content with it. The last four years have been so confusing, so busy, so goal-oriented, so NOISY...selling businesses, selling our Yakima house, packing, unpacking, trying to get a house built over the phone, thousands of miles of driving back and forth, making arrangements, saying goodbye to friends, fighting depression and thinking the house would never be completed, readjusting EVERYTHING....

and then I awaken in this quiet, beautiful room with cedar ceiling and cedar walls. There's a mountain right outside my window. There's no alarm clock. There's only peace. And I'm so "into the present" that there's no room for the stressful memories of the last four years, and they just fade away like last night's dreams.

This is what it's like for me to be here now. We are here. We've reached the destination. It is "The Precious Present."

Bear in Sunglasses

Her name is Bosca. (At the Mannings, every critter has a name.) It would have been Bosco (a good generic bear name), but she's a female.

She's a good guard, a good landmark, and she doesn't eat much.