So this weekend I dropped Tom off at the airport so he could fly away and take care of some family business in far-off California.

I am unofficially on a vacation, myself. Sorta.

On my way home from the airport I bought coffee and sang along with Carrie Underwood and felt light of heart, even though I was headed home for two hours of cleaning before the real estate lady arrived for the open house. Amazingly, I looked forward to cleaning house that day. (Can't figure that one out, myself.)

Nearing home, I stopped at an estate sale inside a house where time stood still decades ago. The home, obviously, had been decorated in the late 1960's and then left mostly unchanged.

I love it when that happens.

Oh, vintage papered rooms galore. I let myself slip backward four decades for this was a smallish two-story house, but the type where rooms appeared in odd places, like a surprise, and your eyes fell upon boxes of Modern Miss magazines from 1967 or the tops of beds with gauzy scarves and black fake leather purses beside hat boxes and seafoam-green formals.

The type of house where you could picture daughters in the fluorescent-pink upstairs bedroom buttoning their mini-skirts and putting on thick layers of mascara. Where possessions were cared for, treasured and appreciated.

Then in a retro fog I drove away, inspired, more anxious than ever to return to my own cozy Craftsman bungalow, to care for what I've been given, making it presentable and sweet for those who would soon walk through my own rooms.

So much living goes on inside a house! We, ourselves, create memories daily and may I consciously choose to create peaceful ones to be cherished far away from now, when everything has changed.

You know, rather than ones I'll pray to forget.


***

Psalm 37:11
"But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy great peace."