My husband’s grandparents were one of the first to build on the hill.  But like the little house in the storybook, the city grew up around them.  Their ocean view has diminished to just a slice outlined by two palm trees out the dining room window.

But every evening, Grandpa would hobble through the kitchen at just the right time and point to the window: “Look at that pretty sunset.”

And it was pretty. Beautiful, in fact. It had to be, for the man of few words to still think it worthy of comment. Even after more than sixty years of the same view.

I thought I might get a bit jealous of the salty air blowing through my hair, the music of the waves, and the endless stretches of beachfront.

But after a week of the traffic and the people, I was ready to go back home. And that first morning we woke again to the sun on the snow in the hills, my husband and I could be found staring out our windows a bit more than usual.

“Grandpa and Grandma can keep their ocean view,” I told him. “I get to look at this.”

Here “where my heart had settled long ago.” Here where there are mountains and snow, green grass and rolling hills. Here where we have thunderstorms before bed and rainbows before breakfast.

And Lord willing that we’re still here in sixty years, I hope I’ll still be exclaiming over the view out my own kitchen window. Just like Grandpa.

{Five-Minute Friday Writing Prompt: “Here”}

I lay back in my chair, willing myself not to sigh audibly as I put my feet up. She might be numbing my mouth in preparation for dental work, but it feels like a mini vacation for the moment.

I open my copy of Bittersweet, wondering if the dentist or assistant will comment on a book with so much sugar on the cover appearing in a dentist office. But they don’t seem to notice my book or its cover, so I delve right into the words.

There’s something so charming about the stories Shauna tells. Or maybe it’s the way she tells them. Light and lilting, heavy and tear-inducing, they’re all mixed up and bound up in a hardback book with chocolate on the cover. And they reach down into my heart and make me want to cry in the dentist chair.

A tear or two does roll down my cheek, because even after two rounds of shots I still jump with the pain of the drilling. The third dose is close enough to a charm, I decide. The pain isn’t enough to make me jump, so I find a focal point even though I can’t breathe like I would in labor (or any other time) considering all the paraphernalia in and around my mouth.

The book is discarded down on the floor, but I’m still mulling over her stories. About the way becoming a mother changes you (even in such silly ways as finding a dentist’s chair relaxing). About the fact that there are always more questions than there are answers.

Her stories weave in between the questions of life. And I wonder if it isn’t in the living through the stories that we are able to understand the answers — after we’ve asked the questions.

{Five-Minute Friday prompt: “after”}