New House and Bobwhites

As many of you already know, we have moved out to the country.
A pretty killer house came open for us, and we jumped at the opportunity to change our lifestyle to one that offers a little more peace and quiet.

Man you know you’re out in the country when your closest neighbor is a half mile down the road. This house is terrific, and it is completely surrounded by magnificent trees. Not only that, but there is a vast landscape, and a barn that is full of Bobwhite Quail. I will share the significance of that in a minute.

A few years ago we all made a pilgrimage to Louisiana for a visit.
It had been a while since I had been home, and I had relatives who had not seen the twins yet. This trip is usually a difficult one for us as a family, but we felt it was necessary and did all that we could to prepare for the event.

We would stay at a hotel in Lafayette, some 30 miles away from Port Barre where my relatives lived, and we would make the commute each day.

All of the children had gotten to the age of awareness, and I really wanted to show them some of the places I had lived when I was a kid.

It had years since I had been back myself, and I was a little melancholy about the whole thing; not really knowing what to expect or how to feel. We drove around Lafayette and I was able to show the children a number of the places where I had lived, (there were a lot of them), where I went to school, the health club where we swam every summer, the park where we played in the middle of town, the mall, and where I went to church.

Because we moved so often, it became difficult to consider any of the places we lived our home.

For me, these were simply houses that kept us out of the weather, and houses that we would not be in very long…and I was o.k. with that. Then we moved to Carencro, and for just a brief moment, this changed for me.

I remember when we moved into the farm house, it was simple, white, cozy, set in the middle of soybean fields, and it was surrounded by terrific trees. These were huge and strong trees; the kind that could block out the sun even in the middle of the hottest of Louisiana summer days.

I loved that house, and for the first time, in a long time, it felt like home.

As we were driving around Lafayette, I decided that I wanted to go out to Carencro, some 10 miles away, and see the old farm house.
As we began to get close to where the house was, I got pretty excited. It was strange how the area had changed, and I did not recognize the house in the place where my memory told me it should be.

The fact of the matter was that the house was no longer there. As we drove past the general area once more, all of a sudden, I recognized the trees. The trees were what made that place home for me; the trees, the land, and the call of the Bobwhites.
There they were like old friends waiting to welcome me back from a long journey. I saw them…and I cried. I could almost hear the Bobwhites singing to the setting sun again just like when I was a kid.

As we pulled into the driveway of this new house in Jasper County the other day, even though it is a completely different place, something felt familiar to me.

This home that we have moved into offers the little boy within my soul the same gifts as did the house in Carencro. We all got out of the van, and the trees; the wonderful trees welcomed us.
The land was gracious and kind, and the Bobwhites sang us, me, a familiar song that assured me that we had all found a home.

Jason, father of six