A few days ago I was sitting at the kitchen table eating half of a sandwich. Seth was standing at the counter shoving a handful of almonds into his mouth. Eliza and Lucille were bouncing off the walls. Just as I about to stand up to move on to the next task, a song came on I hadn’t heard in awhile.

“That’s pretty funny,” I said. “This is one of those things people say will happen, one of those things you hope will happen.”

“This song you mean?” Seth said turning around to face me, leaning his long, tall frame against the cabinets.

“Yeah,” I said. “On our wedding day I probably hoped it would find us like this one day.”

I had on what my friend Dave calls my giving-up-on-life pants while sitting there in the kitchen talking about that old Robert Earl Keen song. I think I was wearing my fleece cap. I’m sure I was a looker. We’d moved that morning from coffee to quick bite with no real sign that a reality check might be lurking. But there it was nonetheless. It came in the form of a few lines in a song that has reminded one of us of the other for years. Ain’t nothin’ better than your own backyard. I’m comin’ home to you.

The week we got married I heard the same song come through the speakers and something in it rang true. We were, after all, getting married in our own backyard and I felt like every road I’d ever been on had led me there. Walking through the pasture that day I didn’t know where we’d be in seven years but there were a few things I dared to hope for. Little girls, my lean man still building things around our five acres, and a community that we love. I knew the fences around our place would probably still need mending, the driveway would need a load of gravel. But those aren’t the things that matter too much.

Some days, when the bank account is hovering just a few transactions shy of panic, when I hope the mechanic hands me my keys with good news, when I let the clock ticks and maddening claims take the upper hand, I am always comforted by the thought that at the other end of the road there’s a warm house with a man and two little girls that I am still happy to come home to. I have everything I’ve ever wanted. And for this, I am oh, so thankful.

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About the Author

Jennifer Savage

Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she's learning to be a farm girl, again. She writes from her home at the base of the Mission Mountains in Arlee, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode's favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at .