Saturday was a sad and beautiful day.  One of my best friends laid her mother to rest. Our pastor, the son-in-law, spoke beautifully of his mother-in-law.  Everything was perfect.

Afterward, I went to our daughter’s new house.  It’s an old house really, in the heart of Liberty. It oozes charm and is full of light.  I did a few things around the yard. 

Then, Sunday, the whole crew turned out to move them in to their new home.  Our son and his bride and Duchess came. My sister-friend from the time I was ten years old came. Our daughter’s dear co-worker and friend came. Rock, of course, was there with the cattle trailer. 

We loaded every vehicle and the trailer and headed to Liberty.  Unloaded, baked some store-bought lasagna, laughed and talked.  The Duchesses had a gingerbread house to work on thanks to a foreseeing daughter-in-love.  The ice box got thoroughly cleaned and both ovens used.  We had cheesecake to honor the memory of one of ours gone on before us. 

We brought a redone table and chairs for the dining room.  We need a lot more chairs! But the Duchesses had a spot to sit to eat and then later, to decorate the gingerbread houses. 

The centerpiece is from Mother.  It is her crocheted doily and her grandfather’s buttermilk pitcher.  I wanted our daughter to have something from the grandmother who adored her so much the very first time we gathered there. 

I might be as excited, if not more, about our girl’s house.  We spent all of Saturday before last cleaning it.  I realized later what is so endearing to me about it.  The windows in the front rooms, the oldest section, have windows like my old house.  Tall with sills close to the floor.  Reminds me of a house I have loved most of my life.  The old house still exists, empty and changed some, in a museum of structures.  The house still exists even more in my dreams and imagination.  Now, at our daughter’s, there is a structure I really can go to and visit with family or sit with a cup of coffee and feel the light.

After I had driven by the house before the final signing, I told my daughter I finally understood why for years, my heart had been saying: go home to Liberty.  Yes.  I foresee many more good days to come in a new old house in Liberty, Texas.