There’s a prayer in Judaism called the Shehecheyanu. (I don’t know how to spell that out phonetically for you.) You say it when you do something for the first time. This morning I had approximately one second alone with my coffee in our new San Francisco kitchen, so I recited it. It felt momentous. Quiet. Normalcy. Peace.
Moments later, my boys woke up and spilled that exact cup of coffee on our brand-new rug. I don’t know the Jewish prayer for getting coffee out of a beige Nordic Knots rug, but thankfully my mother-in-law has taught me about this magic stain remover called “Wine-Away.”
We’re settled now, in the sense that our things are put away. Don’t ask me where any of them are. Yesterday we spent an hour looking for the Band-Aids.
How long does it take before this feels like home? Or not even home — at least a place I live. I don’t know the corners of this house yet. I keep bumping into them. What I do know is that I’ve found a cafe on my corner to write in, and that it’s cloudy here in the morning and sunny in the afternoon.
San Francisco has great trees, and I hope to see more of them soon once I’m done looking for the Band-Aids.
P.S. A longer essay about the beginning of my marriage came out this week in HuffPost. The title is more TMZ-ish than I’d like, but I’m proud of this one. I hope you’ll read it.
Love this ! Especially the prayer over the rug (your piece about your husband reminded me of a favorite Laurie Colwin book called Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object)
mazal tov on your new home! you spelled Shehecheyanu perfectly:)