Restoration

"[He] caught a strange sad feeling of 

happiness and longing and regret 

to be where everything was familiar 

and owned and no world to rush at." 

—Deirdre Dore

I lifted that exquisite sentence above from Deirdre's blog. She captures so much in such a few words. As soon as I read them, I quit trying to understand what I had been feeling because, my God, there it was, said for me.

The photograph of the overgrown house on the Langley Property in Jamaica is by my cousin Ian, who posts a single image taken somewhere on the island for his "Good Morning" series each day. He posts these pictures for family and friends who reside overseas, to give us a taste of home. I looked at this house and I could imagine at once wresting it back to habitation, the loving work of making its rooms look again as they once were. It felt like a metaphor, really, for the internal work of making our lives, overgrown with the flora of years, a place where air and light and peace can once again reside within the comfort of a well-tended place.

As I do in Deirdre's words, I see beauty in that waiting house, and in the verdant green that encroaches against its walls. All it needs is quiet patience and a loving hand to clear and plant and paint and spruce and restore. I imagine the interior looking much as the red-and-white room at right, with paintings by Jamaican artist Judy Ann McMillan, the whole scene so vibrant, alive and tropical, inviting one to sit, pause, share sustenance. It is a great work, this imagined undertaking, especially when applied to a life. 

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