RisorgimentO

I love Wives and Daughters.  The miniseries is delightful but the book is SO much better.  I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Well...I've been thinking about a particular scene from the Who Is Elizabeth Gaskell special feature.  They tool around England with the Gaskell Society, it's mostly old ladies and maybe one or two old men, and some of them are just hilarious.  I'm not sure they mean to be per se but they are.

Anyway, Elizabeth Gaskell spent some of her favorite years in Italy, specifically Rome, so off to Rome they all trot and they're chatting with a local historian and one of the ladies (she's quite animated and funny) was asking him if he also thought that Rome for Elizabeth Gaskell was a RI-sor-GI-MEN-TO!  I absolutely love her pronounciation of it, it cracks me up every time, more particularly because of the reaction of the Italian historian.

Anyway,  Risorgimento is an Italian word meaning any instance or period of renewal or resurgence.  And it's what I'm feeling coming our way.

When Chris and I got married, we named our home (where ever it happened to be) Burnstopia.  It was (and is) our own little utopia, our refuge, our safe haven.  And when I originally set up the blog, I had intended it to be a window on our world for our friends and family who don't live near by.  Over time I tried to bend and twist and shape the blog to fit the way that I needed it to fit, but it just wasn't working.  And then things have also shifted between Chris and I since we've moved South.  I think we've learned a lot about each other, and we've learned a lot about what our marriage needs and what it doesn't.  We've seen pretty clearly our weaknesses, and recommitted to that path that we're on.  One of the things we need is to close the blinds over the window on our world. 

And so I made the decision to close the chapter of the blog that has been Burnstopia.  Much has changed since I started that particular chapter, I tried my best to interweave it all, but it just wasn't working, the seams were coming apart and the fabric was bunching up in unsightly ways.  And sometimes the most productive thing you can do is cut it apart and move on.   

(There are a lot of metaphors happening in this post...maybe I should rethink that...)

Which brings us here.  I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a more clever title, but it is what it is.  This is it.  This is Heaven to me.  Small and insignificant to outsiders, to those of us privileged to live here it's a safe place, a comfortable place.  Not very stylish perhaps, nothing chic or cool.  But soft and welcoming--like well worn flannel.

I'm hoping that with some time I'll find my writing groove again.  And once I get my groove back I'll go public again.  But for now, this is the next chapter.