home life Archives - Brooke Mardell

I laid there in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of my responsibility-free life, and voiced out loud to my husband You realize, right, that these things can live up to, like, 15 years?

Yeah, why did we say yes to this, again?

I don’t know. But my mom said we can give it back if it doesn’t work out.

The next day, we met my mom to pick up our puppies – she had two “picks” from a litter as she finished up her chapter as a dog breeder. She had pre-picked a possible pup for us. And she was the cutest by far. But shy and timid, too. My husband spotted a rambunctious sister hopping around the yard and asked if we could consider her, too.

Since my experience in puppy-picking had last been exercised around age 10, I didn’t exactly have a game plan, but we stepped away from the people and the other pups to see which one of these we’d experimentally take into our home, again reminding ourselves that if it didn’t work out, no matter which one we picked, my mom would take her back.

We placed both pups down on the ground and I walked a few feet away before turning and saying “Here, puppy … “ to which the small one eagerly trotted over, while the rambunctious one wobbled her head and looked around.

Almost convinced, I tried one more test. I placed them both side by side again, walked a few feet away, and said “Here, Abby … “. Sure enough, as though she already knew that was her name, the small one trotted my way and the rambunctious one bounced and hopped in clueless circles.

So, did we choose our pup or did she choose us? I’ve often wondered.

Everyone likes a puppy. I mean, really, they are one of the cutest things this side of heaven. And a cavalier puppy – oh stop it, I mean there’s just no way to even describe the cuteness. Gone were the doubts of the night before.

Until the night after. When this adorable ball of fur Would. Not. Stop. Whining. My responsibility-free life had just been rudely interrupted.

We stumbled through the first few nights with Abby in our home, charmed enough by day to try one more night, growing in sympathy for parents of newborns that have to wake up every two hours. But wary – very very wary – that even when she was full-grown and house-trained, she would still need things like food and water and attention, and we couldn’t just pack up our bags for a weekend without, you know, thinking about her.

I know, I know, the life of the childless is so easily interrupted.

Three days in, I sat my exhausted self down on the cold tile of my kitchen floor. And this little three-pound ball of fluff crawled right up into my lap, and into my heart. I can still see the moment so clearly, because she knew exactly where she belonged, and she’s insisted on that spot ever since.

She crawled into my heart that day as if to say that I wasn’t as carefree as I’d thought. As if to say there was a little puppy-shaped hole inside my heart that she was ready to occupy. I’d never thought of myself as a dog person – things like drool and barking and feces aren’t really my thing. Ironic since I’d been trying to have a baby, but at least they don’t bark.

And there I sat in my fuzzy white robe on the cold kitchen tile, realizing that there really was a space just for her. That I wasn’t really afraid of losing my responsibility-free-lifestyle, but I was afraid of caring for something too deeply, including a dog – or maybe especially a dog. Having a wee little life in our house that wasn’t the baby we’d been hoping for was at once comforting and alarming – I did not want to become “that couple” that treated their dog like their child (spoiler alert, that plan didn’t work. My last shred of personal dignity is that I don’t put my dog in people clothes).

All at once, I remembered my first dog – Heidi. She was a blonde cocker spaniel, with wild bangs that gave her personality. I got her when I was five years old. I can still see the sun shining through the trees as my mom and I went to pick her up. My very first dog.

When I was ten, my sweet, precocious Heidi was hit by a car. We were out of town when it happened and she had survived the hit, but was curled up beneath our porch in pain – her pelvis had been crushed. The vet gave us two options: she might survive a surgery, but it would mean losing at least one hip and back leg. The only tri-pod dogs I’d ever known were objects of jokes between my brothers, so I couldn’t imagine that life for her. The other option was to put her down.

In that moment I had to grow up a little bit. Do I put my dog down or try to save her?

I wish we had tried to save her.

But I didn’t know that until I sat on a cold tile floor and held this new, precious, vulnerable pup. I cried tears for my Heidi in that moment.

I have been governed by practicality for many years and many days. Little did I know that on the day this pup crawled into my heart, she was nudging out parts of my practical self. She would teach me to make decisions with my heart and not just my head. I would spend enough money on her little self to make someone say “e-gads” (also, I think “e-gads” should be reintroduced to our language). I would miss her when I left town. I would delight in the ways she loved me and others. I would marvel at the idea of a dog providing therapy. And no, not just to me. But maybe starting with me. And that’s okay.

She crawled into my lap and straight into my heart that day. After I picked myself up off the cold tile and crawled back into bed with my husband, I said Do you realize that she might live for, like, ONLY 15 years!?!?

Last year two crazy kids bought a house. They tore it open from the inside out. It did the same to them. Both the house and the people are more beautiful than they were before. This is the tour-de-blog through the before, the after, and the during.

Welcome, friend: Living and Dining.

The very first order of business was knocking out a wall to let in some light. Little did I know that a wall was about to be knocked out in my heart too. It would also bring light – eventually.

Our home was built in 1953, and the first thing you noticed when you walked in was the wall right in front of you. Closing you in – a very long, narrow living room and dining room greeted you, with doors cornered to the right and the left.

The door off the dining room led to a galley kitchen. The door off the living room led to the hallway connecting the three bedrooms, and was also your path to the backyard and natural light – through one of the bedrooms. It was an awkward design. And in case you were confused about where the living room ended and the dining room began, our predecessors left us a nice line right down the middle of the wall, demarking from the baby blue living room to the canary yellow dining room. So many wrong things in that sentence.

The kitchen was a goner. We knew we would have to gut it. But late one night, as I was just drifting off to bed, brilliance woke me up. Since we had to gut the kitchen anyways, why not move it? “All we had to do” was knock out a wall.

And so the wall came down. And the light came in. And doors 1 & 2 were needed no more, so we closed them both off and, gasp, got three new rooms for the price of one wall. The living room lost all signs of awkward, and became rather, well, cozy.

It’s first Christmas was the first for us to ever host Jason’s family, complete with a cheery fire in the original brick fireplace.

Note that we haven’t even cleaned the soot from the brick. Is that gross? We prefer it be considered preservation.

The dining room was filled with a few fun projects. Step one: Be rid of the baby blue/canary paint line. Step two: Adopt antique furniture from the Thrift Store and renew for life in the 21^st century.

The whole place transformed and gained new possibility the minute we knocked out that wall.

About two days after we knocked that wall down, and long before we knew just what a difference it would make, another wall started to crumble. My husband’s job got real precarious real suddenly, and I was unprepared for it. It was like a sledge hammer went straight to my core. All I could see was what got knocked down. Like his salary and our health benefits and the safety of working at a place that is also your Church-home. I didn’t know that light had to come into some dark places in my heart. I didn’t know how attached I’d become to things like health insurance and what-not. I didn’t know that I’d been fighting against his character for months, defending his employer instead of my own husband when days had gone awry and I just didn’t want to accept what he was telling me, so I found a way to just, well, not. I didn’t know that I had so many fears sitting just under the surface. Until that wall came down. One hammer blow at a time.

But eventually – just as sure as drywall mud and new paint and texture and crown moulding were put in place to make that hole in the wall look like it had always been precisely that way – eventually my heart started rebuilding. And light was able to shine in the places that had been dark and awkward. I’m not saying there aren’t some lingering shadows in my heart, but I am saying that when that wall came tumbling down, when we had to ask family to wait on payment they’d already earned for their work, when we had to remember how to pray for daily bread because the shopping list now included plumbing and drywall and floorboards, when we heard God say that the next job He was calling to was a support-raising position, and when we actually said “yes”, slowly the light began to filter in as I slowly, painfully, even regretfully, opened my heart more fully to a God who provides even when – or maybe better said, AS – walls come tumbling down.

Brooke Mardell

where sass and sacred collide…

home life

The Day A Puppy Crawled Into My Heart

Room-by-Room: Living & Dining