Those Healing Hands of Time

I've started on a new project. I've been back and forth on whether to do this or not for several months. I decided last week to move forward with it. I'm going to add on to the little cabin. In a few weeks this space in the photo will be a bedroom and bathroom, connected to the cabin by a hallway and a small deck.

I've decided to do it for several reasons, none of which have anything to do with needing more room for myself. I don't. We've downsized and haven't missed anything we let go of. We didn't feel a need to conform to the norm, and we have been proud to identify ourselves as tiny house owners.

It would be nice to have more room when more than one of the kids comes, but that doesn't happen often enough to justify doing it. We've had some good times with air mattresses wall to wall in the cabin and we could do it again. 

I've been happy in the tiny cabin and Rickie and I would have been even happier. We spent a lot of our time outdoors and we liked each other's company. The comment most often made to me when people learned we were planning to retire in a 464 sq ft cabin was "How will y'all stand it with all that togetherness and no place to get away from each other?" I never understood why people asked me that. I guess for people that stay indoors a lot, and have indoor hobbies, space to do that would be important. We had 54 acres and liked to be outside, so it never even came up. One day Rickie was talking to a friend of his also approaching retirement and moving away from the city. He remarked that when you do that the key thing is that each of you like each other. And we did.

But it had been our original intention to add a bedroom on to the cabin. When we built it we had a certain amount of money and we decided rather than just building with a bedroom, and everything being smaller that we would build the part we could afford as we wanted it and add on later if we were able. And if we weren't, we would make it work. 

As we approached retirement we decided not to do it, at least not at that time. We liked the little cabin and we made adjustments, such as adding the closet and building the bunkhouse, that made it all work for us. Because the one room is square, 20 x 20, and had a fireplace centered on one wall and the kitchen all along the other there wasn't a logical way to create a bedroom out of it. But we liked sleeping by the fireplace in the winter and we liked being together. We had spent enough time apart. 

We never totally gave up on adding on though. A couple of days before Rickie died, he was putting his boots on and looking around the cabin and he said to me that if he had money to spare, he would add the bedroom. He left unfinished business, as we all will when we are gone, and we've all been trying to take care of some of that for him. Larry and Lisa have taken our camper, Bernie Ann, and promised to only go West to the places Rickie loved. Sarah and Justin are keeping chickens, the one thing Rickie wanted to do as soon as he retired. John and Zac are going to help me set up a new deer stand and John is going to be the hunting mentor now. I've talked to someone about clearing cedar and doing some fence work, and I hired someone to finish the window replacement project Rickie and I started. The uncles, aunts, and cousins are going to have to help with the most important unfinished business, which is teaching Bixby to fish. And I'm going to add the room.

But an equally important reason I'm doing it is because I need a project. The healing hands of time work better if you stay busy, or at least, that is what I've found has helped me. I find comfort in the peacefulness here but I find comfort in working also. Most days I cry as I work but I work just the same, and I don't cry all day, and to me that's the important thing. To keep going.

The same company that built the cabin and the bunkhouse shell for us, Spring Branch Trading Post, is going to build the shell for the addition. I'll get someone to do the electrical and extend the AC duct work. I'm adding a bathroom also but I don't plan to finish it right away and I may never; it's just a lot easier to add the space now than for someone to come back down the road and try to add it. 

I'm going to finish everything else that I can. Rickie and I worked together on both the cabin and the bunkhouse and there are a lot of things I can do. And I intend to do them. 

And next week I'm going to start. I'm going to remove the corrugated metal Rickie and I added to the screen porch and replace with screen as it was before. We added that because the West sun was so hot there. The addition will shade the back porch and we don't need the metal and the breeze will be nice. I'm also going to remove the stone skirting in that area so the AC ducts can be extended. I have a plan for that and I hope that plan doesn't include spiders and snakes. I've had two rattlesnake encounters the last couple of weeks and I don't want another one. 

Rickie was a driving force in our projects. He never doubted that we could do whatever we had decided on. Since I decided to go ahead with this, I've been tossing and turning and wondering what in the hell was I thinking. But he taught me to have faith in myself and if a plan doesn't work out, well, just get another plan. 

And so, this is my plan. To continue trying, to find joy when I can, to build on what we started here, to cherish my family and friends. And to trust in the hands of time to carry me forward.

They'll lead me safely through the night, and I'll follow as though blind, my future tightly clutched within, those healing hands of time.........


Spring Branch Trading Post link