Bunting

Your first home was on Bunting Avenue.

It was a single-story strip of beige brick apartments, facing north to the plateau known as The Bookcliffs.

The front door opened to a small living room. The kitchen lay about ten steps beyond the threshold. It had tall silly-putty colored cabinets and mottled 1950s mosaic countertops. There was no dishwasher, only a sink under a south-facing window. The view of the back parking lot was broken by the rear-side of a motel, dotted with a dozen frosted rectangular panes of bathroom glass. The same blurry green and white bottles of shampoo on the window ledges told us the motel was no longer a stopover for the weary traveller en route to Salt Lake or Denver. People lived there, permanently.

Your first home was humble.

Two small bedrooms and the bathroom where I found out you were coming flanked the west side of our apartment. Daddy and I shared the bedroom that was two square feet bigger. In an apartment that small, it made a difference. You slept in the other bedroom, in theory. Most of the time you slept in our arms or your swing, which we cranked every ten minutes all night long.

That’s how we remember your newborn days, which began on the morning of July 8th, 1997.

So much has happened in the past ten years. We’ve moved twice. Our current home is ours and it is five times bigger than Bunting. You don’t remember that place, but my mind will forever see baby Aidan Elizabeth nestled in the backdrop of the worn and old and modest. It was the best we could do for you at the time, little daughter.

Ten years ago today, our little slice of ordinary was illuminated and made dear because you were there and nothing else mattered.

We were the richest people in town.