I float in the hammock, feeling the crisp late-summer air move through my toes. I listen to the soft chirps of the finches and the cawing of the crows.

She’s old, this house. Not ancient or historically noteworthy, but she’s lived things. She’s seen things. Things I will never know. Her foundation is strong. She’s sturdy, even after all these years.

I love her, this house. It’s taken some time, but learned to love her. She’s not perfect, you see. Not even close. She has aches and pains and some deep wounds from being unloved for so many years. I hope she knows it wasn’t her fault.

She’s not grand, architecturally speaking. She doesn’t have any particularly defining details. And her floor plan is quite pedestrian. I want her to know, though, that she can be just who she is. That being here - being my home - is enough. That I will love her even when she breaks a little. And that she really is magnificent in her own way. She doesn’t need to be anything other that what she already is.

I feel her come alive more and more as she gets the love she’s been craving for so long. The birds sing to her. She’s wrapped in flowers now. The sun sparkles its way through her new windows. And her walls glow in the golden hour.

She holds onto her old parts just enough to keep herself together until she is given new. She waits patiently, this sturdy girl, like she’s waited for many years. She waits like she’s just beginning to trust for the first time. She waits like she knows she won’t have to hold onto her broken much longer. And I can feel her age becoming increasingly irrelevant. 

“Beauty,” she tells me “is a merely state of mind.”

As I push the hammock into a deeper sway, I watch the bees dance around the cucumber blossoms. The hearty hydrangea leaves flutter in the breeze. The squirrels chase each other through the fruit trees, taunting each other with the peanuts I just tossed out to them for a snack. 

I think about my own wrinkles getting a little deeper, my own hair losing much of its dirty blonde pigment, and my own bones getting just a bit creakier. And I think I might I agree with her. I want to, anyway.

Beauty is being loved. Beauty is being seen. Beauty is living.

Does she love herself, this house?

“Yes,” she whispers “but I forget to from time to time. It’s hard getting older.” 

I tell her she’s not beautiful when, she is beautiful now. She’s not loved when, she is loved now. 

She listens. And little by little she comes more alive with her inherent beauty. And somehow, in me loving her, I realize she has so much more to teach me.