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Our family owns a sign that I bought for The Husband one Christmas from one of those overpriced catalogue companies who do specialty art that makes your life feel…unique. I love that shit, so I’ve bought from them several times over the years. We are also the proud owners, for example, of a twee little wall-hanging that has our names on it alongside maps of Alabama and California, our home states. It’s so overly precious and it’s my JAM.

This particular sign has our last name on it above the coordinates of our first home in Sydney: the latitude and longitude of where we lived four houses ago, seven minutes away from where we are now so not all that different. It felt important at the time to acknowledge our new position in time and space, different as it was from our previous spot in Atlanta, much like a dog marks his territory (or my sons mark theirs, with bush wees all over those coordinates). The other night, TH went back to our last rental to do a sweep of anything we might have missed. The next morning, I noticed that sign next to our front door, planted firmly in the soil there. “We almost forgot it,” he told me.

But he didn’t.

And so it’s planted anew, and so are we, in a home we’ve bought in a land far from where we started, which is strange but so wonderful. From the moment we walked in last week, moving boxes in hand (and so many more being loaded onto a truck at the rental), this felt like home. That breath I’ve been holding for three years–first, holding until we returned back to the US and, quickly, holding in hopes of staying–has been released and re-released endlessly over the last few days as we’ve found a place for everything and everything has found its place. This spot seems made for us: the deck overlooking the trees, the egg-shaped bathtub to which I return nightly, the colours that are exactly what we would have chosen.

Then there are the nearby walks along cliffs and beaches, the expansive park ten minutes away where we envision runs with the dog we’ll be getting, the coffee shop next to the park where TH loads up on caffeine, the grocery stores that are bigger and newer than what we knew, the sandwich shop that has filled a need I’ve been feeling since we moved to Sydney.

If I say everything feels right, will that jinx it? I write that in texts to friends and feel it as anxiety creeping in when I realise I’m just so happy, so relieved to be right where we are. When I look around with a goofy grin at this spot that is ours. When I see our photos arranged around the mantel where, in a few months, Christmas stockings will sit stuffed because we will not be in a hotel this year. As TH and I have said to each other multiple times over the past few days, it all feels too good to be true. We’re waiting for someone to come kick us out.

And it is to good to be true, if I’m expecting this house to change everything: expecting it to fix every problem I’ve ever had, or to be a place to hide permanently from the ups and downs that life will bring. I was standing next to our beautiful new oven the other night, swearing at it because I couldn’t figure out how to turn the damn thing on, and I realised that PMS and anxiety and ingratitude will visit me here too, because I am here. And I’m still me. How annoying.

But the sense of relief makes space for a new view, not just the one from a different vantage point over the bridge, but a view provided by a soft landing–a view of the gifts I did not earn, but am free to now enjoy with tears in my eyes: the runs along the water at sunrise, pink and purple giving way to blue as I slowly conquer new hills. The secret beaches I find on hikes and can’t wait to tell the boys about. The car rides, rather than walks, to school that are a bit longer but also give us space to talk when we’re not hoofing it uphill.

I got an email from The Kid’s teacher last night. He and Little Brother have been champions throughout all the upheaval of the last few weeks: coronavirus, homeschool, the move. (They’ve also been assholes, to be sure, but champions nonetheless.) TK has the added weight of his therapist being faded out completely, rather than gradually, because of COVID, so now he goes it alone daily in what I can only see as a feat of invincibility. I yearn for any updates the teacher can give while walking the delicate line of not wanting to harass her, so yesterday’s note, when it arrived as I was settling in to bed, was the most incredible gift.

“James had a fantastic day today!” she began, going on to describe how Mondays can be tough but he gave everything a go and “completed the activities to a really high standard.” She went on, “He melted my heart when he said, ‘I am proud of me today.'”

Well shit. I sat in bed, reading and rereading, tears overflowing, as she finished by saying how happy she is to teach him. I just…sometimes, you know, the hard stuff is too much. And sometimes? The beautiful stuff is.

The other night TH was putting the boys to bed and I saw our wedding photo book sitting in its new spot on the bookcase. I grabbed it and a glass of wine and took them both outside, poring over the decade-old memories: the two of us having no idea what lay ahead, a couple of non-tired idiots forging ahead into a new life. Having no idea what cleaving to each other would look like, what forms it would take as it shifted between joy and sorrow and pain and glory, too hard and too beautiful, everything too much and yet carried on the breath of grace that somehow makes it just what, and where, it should be.