I didn't have anything terribly profound to share today, but yesterday I was walking in the gardens and I realized that there was something important about my house and who I've been while I have lived here.  There is a particular kind of silence that settles into a room once the sun dips below the peaks of the mountains, a quiet that feels less like emptiness and more like an audience. My living room is technically older than I am—its bones were settled into this Virginia earth long before I arrived—and yet, it feels as though we have grown up together. To a stranger, the layout might seem fixed, the decor a simple choice of fabric and light, but I know better. If I sit still enough, I can almost see the ghosts of who I used to be still wandering this space: the woman who first painted these walls with such frantic hope, the younger version of myself who paced these floorboards through restless nights, and the one who learned, slowly and painfully, how to carve out a life here...