I am so struck by the many touches in our new home that reveal the spirit of Florence Walrath, who lived her for 80 years and made every inch of it her own, as my wife will soon begin to do. Kindred spirits, those.

I feel as if I have come home whenever I come to the New Bedlam Farm. The house needs a great deal of work – I am only realizing how much. Yet I love everything in it and there is not much we would like to really change. (Okay, the bathroom, maybe.)  As I work through the complexities of home buying – people talk about real estate transactions in much the same way they talk about the economy, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads in sympathy – I remember the vows Maria and I took at our wedding two years ago, and also the vows I made to myself as I have worked my way through fear and challenge. We have a choice, as does everyone. We can awaken or we can sleep through the setting of narrow boundaries for us, accepting these external ideas of what safety and comfort mean.

We can choose fear, a kind of death, or we can chose life, an affirmation. We choose life. I choose life. Every time I turn away from fear, move forward with my life, separate myself from the  great mob and their news,  shouting at us to be afraid, be concerned, be careful, take your tests and count your savings, be small and angry, be left or right, I am choosing life. Buying this house, we choose it again.

This is perhaps what I feel in the New Bedlam Farm, another fork in the road, another rebirth and renewal, another chance to make a choice for living my life. Here’s to that and to the many brave people out there struggling so mightily to do the same. We are here. We are alive.