New Life Begins.....

The lemon yellow room with the white bunk beds looked out over the tall trees.  I loved the way the late afternoon sun made it almost glow, and the vantage point it provided for admiring the setting sun.  But those white beds, with their cheery, almost nautical theme, also served as a reminder of a very sad and painful time indeed.
Standing empty in front of the walls that had been insulated by my husband and painted by me in preparation for the adopted Ethiopian girls whose arrival was written on our hearts but was apparently not meant to be, they spoke volumes in the quiet. And the noise created by that quiet was so deafening that, for a time, I could not visit that room.
Then, some light.  My niece and nephew stayed in that lemony space, filling it with laughter.  Little Charlotte, in our city with her parents for a year while we were abroad, made the lemon room her own, declaring it home.  Her baby brother Kiva, almost born in the house itself, also spent time there, growing big and strong.
Yesterday, a moving van arrived to take our white bunk beds to one of the first Syrian refugee families arriving in Canada, whose little girls, 4 and 7, had to leave beds and toys and everything else behind when they fled Syria with the family after the first bombs fell.  We haven't met them, but are glad to know their new life will be made just a bit easier because of those beds.  For what is more important than a safe place to lay your head.
Today, we fashioned a new little reading and writing room out of that glowing lemony space, with a pull-out bed for visitors, just in case.  Curled up on the couch, books in hand, with the setting sun illuminating everything, we sense new life all round.