Revisiting the Blue House

 It had been a solid four years since I had been to my Dad and stepmom's mountain house a little over an hour from here.  We spent the most wonderful, gorgeous, idyllic long weekend there in September of 2019. Then covid hit, and no one really traveled; in October of 2020, my Dad and stepmom did come back to the mountains, but they stayed with us and visited us. In 2021, my Dad didn't come back because he was living in Georgia, caring for his brother-in-law with cancer, who died in December of that year.  My stepmom essentially drove my father from the funeral to the emergency room.  His illness, not yet diagnosed, had begun. He died last September.

{my stepmom's aunt is an artist. This painting is actually huge!}

So my stepmom decided to come stay at the mountain house for the first time in three years. Our family met her there a couple of Sundays ago for a work day.  But driving into the deeper mountains and into the beautiful valley where the house is located was an emotional experience for me.  My Dad first began living there when I was younger than Finn.  I have over thirty years of memories there.  It's where my husband drove when he went to go ask my father for his blessing to marry me.  It's where we celebrated the new millennium (usually we're in Charleston at the new year, but my father had to stay onsite at work to be sure the world didn't end, so we moved our usual family gathering to the mountains instead).  I have great memories there, and painful memories there.  It's where I climbed ancient apple trees and ate the fruit--nothing like an heirloom apple, untouched by human "help!" It's where I ate Concord grapes right off the vine, ran many miles down a dirt road next to a creek, and, maybe most poignantly of all, rode with my Dad all over the farm, even up to the "backside" of the farm, to the highest point around, and sat and looked at God's gorgeous creation: sweeping 360-degree views of the mountains and valley.  

A few days before my father died, he asked me to bring my stepmom into the room.  She came in.  He looked at her and said "let's go up yonder on the hill, look down over the vale."  The quaint language struck me. She and I looked at each other.  We knew exactly what he was seeing.  He wanted to go sit on that mountain again. 

So, tears.  

{I love her marble-topped living room set.}

Once we got to the house I was ok.  There was much work to be done!  Mr. Polly, Finn, and Annie all worked outside all day, and my sister met us for the afternoon and she worked outside, too. I took over cleaning inside--after three years of not being lived in, there was some dirt and dust to mitigate.  I did lots of sweeping, wiping down, dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing.  And then we all sat down together for a meal. 

The house actually belongs to my stepmom; she bought it when my father retired. His housing was provided by his employer and when he retired he was ready to move back home to Charleston, but my stepmom wanted to have a place in the mountains (she's from a nearby town).  So she found this little blue house, two bedrooms, one bathroom, just over a ridge from where they'd been living.  She furnished it with her family heirlooms and artwork.  And so it remains. 

{Victorian settee. Excellent for photo shoots of little girls in dresses!}

I miss my papa.  And God is good.