Mae and Jules dashed out the door ahead of me when I asked if they wanted to go to the barn. “Yeaaah!” they cried. They love the barn. They love the horses. They are their mamma’s daughters.

I love the barn too. It was what won my heart when we first saw this place. Sure, the old house was cool but the barn.. oh, it’s a hell of a barn. Three stories high, 90′ long. Built over 100 years ago. We’ve made some changes over the years, adding two stalls, moving the tack room, painting the huge sliding doors, reinforcing the foundation, but it is basically unaltered and retains its original form and charm. Bats, raccoons and foxes have all found shelter within the eaves. Chipmunks and barn swallows think they own the place (and when the bird poo is falling on you from two stories up, they kind of do).  Back when we had our last barn cat, I would often see him sauntering out of the barn with a dozen riled up swallows swooping down at his head. He never once looked up or took a swat.

It’s not just the barn I love, it’s the whole lifestyle. It’s having an authentic reason to shop at the feed and grain store, to thumb through farm and ranch catalogues. It’s wearing boots and jeans and leather work gloves. It’s worn-smooth timbers and bales of hay. And of course, it’s the horses.

Today, as the girls and I swept the barn then wandered into the pasture to pet the horses, I thought about how this is not the way I wanted things to go. I love having land and livestock. I love that my kids have this incredible setting for their childhoods. And yet, here I am, poised to leave it all.

I have convinced myself lately that I don’t want it anymore because I am tired and overworked and don’t have the time for it. But it’s something that I’ve desired my whole life. I am disappointed that what we have started here is not playing out as I dreamed it would.  Dex is not the only one who has invested his heart and soul in this place. I have too. I’ve dreamed my whole life of owning horses, having a barn, teaching my kids to ride - living in a place like this. And now I feel … betrayed, in a sense, by circumstance. There is no one to blame - in our wildest dreams we could not have seen it working out this way, with a bursting full house and all the small but significant ways our choice would work against us.

I have to remind myself that I don’t know what the next stage in our lives will look like - a house in the ‘burbs or a place on some land, rented horses or ponies in the backyard. Nothing has been decided and I choose to believe that the right place will be there for us when we are ready.