I saw that you were fading that you were leaving your own mind

I gave you water just to soothe your failing heart, and take away the fear

This was me, in my parents’ kitchen, before my senior prom nearly 20 years ago. (And my mom helping pin my corsage on my date. )

I often joke nothing has changed in that house in that time, but finding this photo today really reinforced that point for me.

I’ve been itching to redo the kitchen since finally moving back in March, unable to shake the feeling this room was especially dated. I’ve been in the thick of this project for the past few weeks, changing out appliances and hardware, repainting the walls.

Although I’ve been desperate for the change, I found myself struggling to make some of them, especially when it came time to take the photos hanging along the top railing.

They were nothing special: calendar pages of vintage farm ads my mom cut out and put onto colored paper before throwing them into cheap frames. But it was my mom who did all that–the selecting, the cutting, the scotch taping, the framing.

As I reached to remove them, I realized she was most likely the last to touch these things, eyeballing them and adjusting just so based on whatever Vision she was seeing through. Feeling like I was undoing her work, and in turn undoing her, I left the job half finished.

Determined to make some kind of progress. i settled on taking down the little wooden houses that hung over the entrance into the kitchen. They’d been there just as long, but felt less sentimental for whatever reason. As I took them down, I realized something that made me simultaneously laugh and cry hysterically: instead of taking the decorations down the last time the room was

painted, they simply worked around them, their

silhouettes forever etched on the wall.

I’m not sure if that was my mom’s doing, or if my parents hired someone to do the work, but it felt like I uncovered the piece of her that I was searching for, desperate not to lose.

Looking forward to finding the ways to make sure all the love and history of this home remain present within (and on) its walls.

Special thanks to @iheartpaintingnj for making my stencil dreams come true