Five Minute Friday – Here

Lisa-Jo Baker has a blog that I love to read. She has this thing on Fridays – Five Minute Friday. You guessed it; write for five minutes straight. No editing. No re-do.

Today’s Topic: HERE

GO

Here.

This room. It’s changed.

It looks like nothing I know.

This isn’t the paint I chose or the furniture I arranged.

It’s not the home I built.

We woke up in a new room, a new life.

Here.

I survey the new room.

But it is dark, so dark I can hardly breathe. It’s suffocating, but we cannot turn back.

I call out for Danny, but he does not answer.

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

I’m tripping over things, and learning to find my way through.

I find him.

Danny stands at the door to the old room, knocking. He wants to go back, back to what we know, what we made.

I knock out the wall for a window, and then another.

I painted the walls a beautiful blue and hung new pictures of our family, broken, but family nonetheless.

Here.

I look back at Danny, knocking on the door back to life on the parallel. He jiggles the door knob trying to get it to open. He yanks and pulls and pounds on the door. But it doesn’t open.

We must live here.

I go beside him and knock myself.

“Please. Can’t we go back? Can’t we go back to what we know and what we love, and what is normal?”

I cry. Slumping down with my back against the door and my head in my hands.

It is not a dream to wake from. We must make this our home.

Here.

I get new furniture. It’s comfortable, but doesn’t quite feel like home yet.

I organize my kitchen and put some flowers on the table.

I turn on some music. It’s our favorite artist and the room becomes a bit more familiar.

Chocolate chip cookies are in the oven and it begins to feel and smell like home.

This new room. This new life.

Here.

I’ve pulled him away from the door.

We make our lives in this new room, this new normal.

But, every once in a while, we find ourselves at the door back to what we dreamed, knocking to see if it’ll open.

Here. In this new room. In this new life. In this new normal.

We live here. For better. For worse.

Waiting for the day we aren’t here anymore and find ourselves in a new, better After.