We’ve lived in our current home, which sits on a cul de sac on the very southernmost tip of Bainbridge Island, for over 15 years—far longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life. Our house was one of several on our street that was barged over from from Lake Washington, planted on South Beach Drive, and given a second life on our little island in the Puget Sound. When we bought it, the house needed a good bit of work to accommodate our lives and growing family; what began as love at first sight became a true labor of love, and we spent the first half of our time here living under significant construction, carefully building our dream home into being.
Though there were a small bunch of kids living in our neighborhood when we moved to South Beach, most were much older than our small ones, with the very important exception of the Pearson girls, who moved across the street from us soon after we arrived, and whose home, because of our immediate love for and closeness to the people who built and lived in it, quickly felt like an extension of our own. And once that bridge was built, what was at first just a little motley cluster of houses soon became our neighborhood.
Over the years, we’ve watched families move in and move out, each family contributing their own special energy when they’ve come, and leaving a bit of it here when they’ve gone, causing the neighborhood to evolve like an organic, living thing. As kids have grown up and as nests have emptied, the faces and feeling of the place have changed, but my love for our neighborhood remains constant, and then grows. Here is where all three of our kids caught their first bus ride to Blakely, here is where the training wheels came off; here is where we’ve taken hundreds of Homecoming, Tolo and 8th grade Banquet photos, here is where best friends painted Amelia’s name on the street, a few nights before her graduation.
Last year, the Phillips Family moved in and instantly doubled, for the first time in a long while, the number of kids living on our end of South Beach Drive. The Phillipses have an inspired knack for decorating their front yard for the holidays, and if you’ve walked our street with any regularity, I’m guessing you’ve enjoyed their impressive and whimsical Halloween and Christmas displays. Today, as I walked with Charlotte home from the park, I noticed something very special in the shadows of our newest neighbors’ shrubbery: a sweet fairy village complete with fairies and their colorful dwellings—a tiny new neighborhood within our neighborhood—sprouted up among the greenery to charm any who happen to catch a glimpse of it. And just like that, after all these years, I fell a little bit deeper.
Today, our neighborhood and the fairies who now live here are my joy. #joyinplace
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