Not once… during twenty, life-enriching years in Texas…did I imagine a homecoming that would fulfill a schoolgirl dream of living in one of Oklahoma City’s oldest neighborhoods.  So who could have guessed — until it happened five short years later — that I’d trade my 1928 Mesta Park beauty for a 1950’s rambling California Ranch, just twenty blocks up the street?

Life, as we live it, is a thicket of surprises and leaves many mysteries to be solved. Often, I carry them with me as I head into my garden… which has become a safe spot to reflect upon moments of my life, usually while performing some routine garden chore.  There, in the quiet magic, I can often discern and decipher the connection of seemingly discrete events across my life. Often separated by years and decades, moments and events can come together as answers to unasked questions, in the same powerful way a once indecipherable poem is suddenly — like “magic” — finally understood.  Dots connect.  The line of a story forms. A beginning finds something closer to an ending… with deeper meanings revealed.

In just this way, I’ve come to perceive how both Oklahoma homes, since my return from Texas, have served to bring me back full circle to the halcyon days of my childhood… to the place where dreams are the stuff of everyday life and the line between the two grows faint. And though the vibe is different in my “new” neighborhood, home is still where an everyday life takes place; here I cook and keep house, I read and I write and I kneel on knees to pray and garden.

I’m grateful to share days with my husband who remains the love of my life and a large family stretched to embrace those who share the lives of four adult children — four great spouses and eight growing-like-weeds grandchildren (the ‘grands’).  I fill my days with typical housewife pursuits though nothing about life is typical. Indeed, the best of life is what happens in between the exclamation points of birthdays, weddings and other memorable moments. It’s ironic we take photos of the moments we won’t forget and fail to preserve what is otherwise forgettable.  My blog is an attempt at the latter.