Happy Birthday to Tara!

Last July 4, Rhett and I spent our first night at Tara. Nevermind that the kitchen looked like this:

Charming, I know. Did I mention we were without plumbing too at that point? Oh, and let's not forget that I was 37 weeks pregnant going to the bathroom in the woods. I don't think our neighbors noticed, but I'm sure they would have been thrilled to know that the Clampetts were moving in.

Needless to say, our first night at Tara was not quite a 4 star experience, but we survived. In fact, if you're one of those annoyingly optimistic people you'd probably say that a rocky start at Tara has made all the things we've accomplished in the past year that much sweeter.

You're entitled to your opinion.

All this has got me thinking, however, of what we really need out of a house. What do we have to have out of a building to make us happy? You can say that plumbing and electricity are non-negotiables, but are they really? Will simply four walls do? And aren't the best memories of where we live memories of when something crazy happened- like when all the power went out and we had to cook over the fire and play Monopoly by candlelight?

This past weekend, our family traveled to south Georgia for Rhett's 75th annual family reunion. The reunion was a lot of fun, and over 225 of Rhett's extended family were there, which really meant that there was a LOT of good food. Although I'm from the South, I'm pretty sure that certain parts of the country should require a passport, because I couldn't find the tiny town (is it even a town?) of Hatley on a map. What impressed me as much as the food and fellowship of all the wonderful folks I met this past weekend was the simple character of some of the buildings.

Here's the Hatley Women's Club:

And the Courthouse, which I am told also doubled as the jail...

Silly to some, I suppose, but I love these simple buildings. They remind me that in some places the buildings we live our lives in were, and still are, free of fuss (though I'm not sure the "jail" makes me feel very safe). For women to get together and do good or for justice to be done in a place like Hatley, they didn't need  a glossy million-dollar place to do it in.

Winston Churchill wrote, "We shape our buildings and then they shape us." Isn't that the case? We have an idea of how we want our buildings to work and function but in reality, once we live and work inside them, they begin to shape the way we do things. It's not because of their ammenities either. Simple structures or even those that are incomplete can make a big impact.

While I'm grateful for the great strides that Tara has made in the last year, I smile when I think about those first few crazy nights at this house last July. Forget that there was hardly a kitchen and I had to run off into the woods to go to the bathroom, we were just so happy to be here.

Happy Anniversary, Tara!