Decision Points

We first saw the House on the Corner in May, when Boy#1 had not yet reached his first birthday and Small Town was not yet home. The magnolia in the back yard was blooming.

I'd never seen a magnolia tree before, and I was enchanted by the huge, waxy leaves and the enormous, intoxicatingly fragrant  blooms.

We did our due diligence, measuring the rooms, peering worriedly at the hairline cracks time had left in the 80-year-old stucco, exclaiming over the historic richness of the house's resume. But I was only going through the motions: I had fallen in love with the house that would welcome our family when I saw that tree.

Good lives have been built on less.