The days start to roll into one after a while. Our schedules consist of a full day’s work, home renovations, eating, yard work, rinse and repeat. It seems as everything hangs in various stages of completion and my sense of ADD keeps me floating from one project to the next…which doesn’t allow for quick visual process. And it drives Awesome a little batty with his focused and meticulous mindset.

Naturally, like with anything, when we start to peel back the onion, we find so many hidden surprises. Our house was built in 1935 and we are the fourth set of owners. The last lady who called this place home lived here for more than 50 years. Two weeks shy of her 100th birthday she passed away in the very room I sit in now. I suppose I could view this as morose, but perhaps passing in your own home, is as comfortable as wearing your favorite sweater, swaddled by everything you love. Better than leaving the world from the harsh and sterile surroundings of a hospital, but I digress.

Her name was Lucille. Signatures and dates imprint our sidewalk from her grandkids when the concrete was laid back in the 70’s…before I was born. White embroidered drapes decorated the windows of an astonishingly yellow kitchen. A sunny greeting when we first arrived. The neighbors told us how proud she was of her yellow kitchen. So proud in fact, its monochromatic hue adorned everything from the walls, window and door trim, to the cabinets and ceiling. When the sun pierced through the veil each morning, the kitchen glowed bright like a canary. I’ve never seen so much yellow in one concentrated place before!

We googled our house to see the transformation of time over the last several years. August of 2017 revealed Lucille tending to the front yard wearing bright red shorts. Pictured below.

These last five years, as we’ve made updates and put our own flavor and taste to our home (bye bye yellow kitchen and hello mineral green) we’ve found little relics of Lucille’s time here, including an invitation to her 60th high school reunion.  Every time we make a big change, we speak to her as if she’s standing across the room, requesting a blessing as we make this place our own, hoping she’s at ease with the alterations. The dog no longer hovers in open hallways or stares strangely into space anymore…not like she did when we first moved here, catching a scent of Lucille’s lingering essence.

Hopefully her spirit has long since passed out of this realm and into the next dimension, but we like to pay our respects nonetheless. Our time here is merely a drop in the bucket compared to her decades on this plot of land. And each spring, as the daffodils begin to bloom, I smile knowing she’s left a touch of herself behind.