134

Outside, slushy rain falls, tapping against our windows, and the green of this grass isn't long for our ground. The dogs are making nests from abandoned blankets, fleece and wool, and our heat is barely puttering, keeping quiet as my income has shrunk bewilderingly low. I realize if we had a baby, we'd need space heaters, or a more robust heating bill, a bravery to keep that delicate skin a delicate pink.

For now, I'm loving our family as it is: the six of us in this transforming house, a house I admit is becoming (finally) less cluttered (though it still has a ways to go), a house that has been our home for so long, and when Ryan mentions the possibility of moving to the Twin Cities after I am done with my MFA (if I find a job teaching in the Twin Cities at the college level--comp, most likely, if this is the path I choose) and how that brings sorrow to my chest, despite my dear friends living there, because I have fallen in love with this little town with the bookstore that will keep me over the holidays, the arts center at one end and the bluffs at the other, with the Mississippi and the woods, with dreams of a house near Hay Creek as opposed to a smaller property and even smaller rooms.

For now, I am loving my life as it is: the luck of makeshift family and friends, the ways in which paths are surprising, delightful. I am lucky with love in my heart.