The Sunshine House

One year of calling our house “home”

Artistic rendering of the Sunshine House, by Annalee

“You know the way home from here, right?” I ask Matt as we pull off the autobahn. I lean forward and switch off Waze. The slightly robotic woman’s voice always grates my nerves. I’m bothered by my desperate need for “her” lo these many years as I learn my way around yet another place. The little chirp when I miss my turn sends waves of anxiety through me as I remember the dozens of miles added to my drives around Korea whenever I missed my exit. After we moved here, as quickly as I could, I committed to memory the landmarks for our home that told me where I was and how much further I had to go.

Here’s the roundabout—go to the inner lane on this one, but it doesn’t matter for the next two. Here’s the bakery that I walk to every Saturday for schoko-croissants, nußschnecke, and apfeltasche. Here’s that resplendent garden I admire every time I pass it, with the huge bush of coral colored roses I stared at until autumn came and turned everything to gold. Here’s the school—drive slowly. Now here’s the cemetery with its ancient stone wall dress in its coat of moss and ivy, and here—no, not that street, the one after it—is where I turn and wind around the bend.

And now I’m home.

“We should give the house a name!” my kids said when we moved in, and instantly I knew what we should call it: The Sunshine House. To be honest, though, I can’t say I adore it as a structure. Friends who were stationed here before us advised us to take our time finding a place to live, but after so many moves, we were eager to settle down as soon as possible. We found a house with lots of huge windows and light that poured in all day, and I liked that. I knew it would be important during the long, gray winter months. Because of their modern shapes, though, the windows don’t have rolladens (roll-down shutters) to block out the light. Summer days stretch forever, with the first light arriving around four in the morning and the last fading after 10:30 at night. We have vertical blinds which help, of course, and are better for the shape of our windows. We’ve attempted to hang curtains with creative uses of tension rods and command hooks, and we are surviving. But rolladens would be better.

The basement, while cool and dark in the summer, can feel damp, and the plaster there crumbles in several places. Our kitchen has almost no built-in storage and a tiny sink. I bought two used IKEA cupboards from someone leaving to construct a makeshift pantry, but it never seems quite sufficient for a family our size. There’s the privacy issue too. Our four bedrooms on the top floor share a bathroom roughly the size of a convention center, so we often share the space for many of the tasks a bathroom is used for. Also, nothing is very soundproof. We have bathrooms on the other floors too, but one has just a bathtub and the other has a shower whose temperature can only be controlled by the magic touch of the landlord whenever we call him about the scalding water coming out.

And yet, somehow, this space feels comfortable and cheery. We have very friendly neighbors who tolerate—maybe even enjoy?—our crazy family. Thanks to the dozens of places we’ve lived, I’ve learned I would rather live in a house with some cosmetic issues or inconveniences but surrounded by kindness than somewhere flashier with neighbors who despise us. The location is perfect too, and as the famous “they” say, when it comes to a house, “Location, location, location!”

What makes a house a home? This question from an eighth grade essay contest I didn’t win still teases my mind. Many will say that “home is where the heart is,” but that answer doesn’t, and never did, fit a life like mine. My heart is in so many places: the little yellow house where I first lived, surrounded by rice paddies, in rural Bangladesh; the frangipani trees a couple hours from there, where I spent hours of my childhood playing with friends; the Central Valley of Northern California, where I met Matt in a church parking lot and we spent our earliest days surrounded by miles of farmland that smelled like alfalfa and dairy farms and the subtle tang of sulfur on the vineyards as they baked under the sun—to name just a few. I’ve learned, too, that your heart can be in places your body never was: on aircraft carriers in the middle of vast oceans and at deployment sites far away, in college dorm rooms where your now-grown babies sleep.

No, the answer isn’t that simple. But as I move through the house every day, I see landmarks telling me where I am.

Here’s that massive velvet couch Skyler, Lilly, and I heaved into a moving van and dragged into our living room. In the days since, we’ve sprawled here for lingering conversations, and laughed and tucked ourselves under blankets with good books or for naps.

Here’s the table where all seven of us gathered last summer, winter, and now again this summer, where we race each other to the table to avoid sitting in “the rotten egg chair.”¹

Portrait of our backyard, as captured by Wyatt. Taken on an old iPad with a case that always hangs a little into a lens, shot through a window giving it a very interesting vintage tone. I like it!

Here’s the garden we planted last year and watched what grew with wonder and surprise, where the tulips that were dying when we first saw the house bloomed again a couple months ago, where we’ve waged wars with slugs this spring and now see the first flowers we planted blooming.

Here’s the long driveway that seemed like a good idea in the summer because it meant lots of space for the kids to skateboard and friends to park when they came over. Last winter it looked miles long under the heavy blanket of snow we had to shovel a couple times. Annalee covers it with chalk art and prays for rain not to wash it away, and when it does she comes back out to create it all again, this time even better.

Here’s the spot where the kids made a little snow family and now roses hang heavy on their branches.

Here’s the hill surrounded by trees that went from green to gold to bare to green again, where the kids sledded with happy screams, and where deer pause, thoughtfully staring through the fence as Mabel loses her mind, racing back and forth barking like crazy.

It’s not perfect. We’ve cried here, we’ve been sick, we’ve laid awake at night, in the grips of anxiety. I know we won’t be here forever, too, and maybe that knowledge grants me a soft and gentle focus. But we’ve soaked in the sunshine pouring through all the windows and filled the house with music and laughter and soft places to rest for a while.

Here’s the front door that we roll our suitcases through after one of our trips away. Here’s the gate we’ve opened a hundred times, coming home from long rambles in the woods, where the kids call to me as they walk toward the house at 3:30 every school day, and I look up from the couch where I sit writing. Here’s where—for now anyway, and hopefully a little longer—our voices fill the space with the words, “We’re home!”

1. Not as bad as it sounds! Just an oddball chair, or maybe the stool from our kitchen table that’s a little too high for our table.