Today it has been about a year since we’ve returned from London; nine months since we unpacked the last box at our cookie-cutter suburban rental in Austin. We felt it prudent to rent a house for our first year back, in order to better decide into which neighborhood we should establish permanence. It had been some time since we lived here, and rapid change has settled in, made itself at home. I grew up here, but much of it is unfamiliar.
We’ve decided to call central Texas home, to do what Thomas Merton advises and call its ordinariness one of its greatest blessings. The kids are adjusting to a commonplace routine of school at the same place every day, and the five of us have neighborhood pool passes.
We are also going to buy a house.
This afternoon, Saturday and muggy already for early May, we pull into the driveway of a house for sale—a complete fixer-upper, which is just what we want, to take advantage of Kyle’s carpentry prowess. The five of us walk in and greet a woman named Gillian, who is the childhood friend of my aunt Jan, and who is selling the house on behalf of her elderly mother.
We start the polite but awkward investigation of envisioning our family meals in a stranger’s kitchen, arranging our shelves of toys in these different bedrooms. I want to peek in the closets without feeling like a snoop. It is a good house, and it would serve us well. But this is Austin, and the price we can offer is a long shot for this neighborhood.
The five of us head out to the backyard, a weeded-over swath of grass and dandelions, and the kids start claiming specific spots for our things: Here’s where our picnic table can go; this can be a vegetable garden; maybe Dad can build us a treehouse here. I spy something standing near a fledgling tree, lopsided in the corner, perhaps a forgotten gardening tool left long ago. I walk over and inspect.
It is a garden statue of Saint Francis, buried in the dirt up to his waist and caked with dried mud. It looks as though he’s been keeping watch over this corner of a suburban backyard for decades, with nary a witness to give substance to his quiet work. I smile, remembering some of the wisdom Francis imparted on me in Italy: “We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.” And now he’s here, in a potential home of ours.
I follow my family back toward the house’s sun porch, where Kyle has started chatting with Gillian. I walk through the screen door and spot an unexpected army of oil paintings leaned against the screened walls, stacked in twos and threes behind one another, some mounted in chipped gilded frames, others unframed as undressed canvases.
“Was your mother an art collector?” I ask Gillian.
“No,” she replies, “She was a painter.” My eyes gaze over the stacks of paintings.
“Are all these hers?” I ask.
“Yes, they were. She was just an amateur, but she loved doing it.”
I walk slowly around the screened porch to admire this layperson’s ability to wield a paintbrush in oil; her subjects seemed to be everything from bowls of fruit, to children, to fields of Texas wildflowers, to busy city streets. She was gifted.
“Hey—we’ve been here!” I hear Finn exclaim. He is pointing at a painting in the corner.
We all walk to where he stands as he continues. “See? That town is where we lost my red sweatshirt! Remember?” He jumps up and down in excitement. I squint my eyes to scrutinize the painting. It is lovely enough, but to me it looks like a nondescript corner of a European village—stone-colored buildings with awnings covering doors on the bottom floor, vendors selling flowers, patrons being served coffee on outdoor bistro tables.
“Actually—Finn, I think you’re right. That does look like Assisi,” Kyle says.
“It does?” I ask. I don’t notice details with nearly the aptitude as Kyle.
“By any chance, did your mom spend any time in Assisi?” he asks Gillian.
“I’m pretty sure she did, now that you ask,” she answers. “If I remember, I think she went there, then came back and painted this.”
“See? I told you,” says Finn. “It’s Assisi!”
“That’s remarkable he would notice that,” Gillian says.
“It really is!” I laugh. To me the painting still looks like customary old buildings pervasive all over the continent, but I suppose there is a razor-thin hint of familiarity to those cobblestone roads. I shake my head in wonder—first, Francis hanging out in the backyard. Now, Assisi saying ciao to me when I least expect it.
It’s tempting to play mind games and tell myself, It’s a sign! This is the house for us! But I know better. The highest price we can offer for this house is lower than the going rate in this part of Austin, and Gillian needs a solid bounty for her mother’s sake. We make our offer, cross our fingers, and shrug our shoulders in disappointed understanding when we find out she has to decline.
Our family eventually pinpoints the just-right fixer-upper for us, in a town just outside Austin I’ve admired since I was a young girl. We find a slice of land to, Lord willing, start burying deep roots; a foundation supporting four walls that will house our backpacks when we’re not out in the world exploring. This is a small town, too, and during our year in Austin, we’ve come to remember how much we love small towns—like Bend, Cadenet, and Assisi.
One afternoon a few weeks later, my aunt Jan texts me to ask if I’d like to go to lunch. We make our plans, and I end with a reply that I’ll see her soon.
“Oh, and I have something for you,” she adds as an afterthought a few minutes later. “Gillian wanted you to have this one painting of a European street scene, so she dropped it off here at my house. I guess you know something about it?”
I smile, and my eyes water. I know something about it.
A painting of a quotidian street corner in Assisi is mounted on the wall, humble and dignified, in our fixer-upper home next to a pile of Kyle’s tools and a plastic cup of nails waiting to be used. Her happy scene greets me when I walk in from the library and start the kettle for a cup of tea, winks ciao after I tuck the kids into bed at night and collapse onto the couch with the day’s exhaustion behind me. Even though she was collecting dust in a ramshackle Texas home while we were out there, she reminds me of my family’s adventures.
She is now part of our home in the world.