Love Nests by Milou Koenings

There's a love nest on the windowsill of our bedroom.  

Photo Robyn Cox, cc-by-sa-2.0

It's a pigeon nest, with eggs waiting to hatch.  I wake in the morning to the cooing of doves.

Just yesterday, my daughter and her fiancé took me to see the one-bedroom apartment they've found.   

Their faces glowed as they described it to me - the high ceilings, the brand new kitchen counters, the pretty bathroom. The fact that it's so close to the bus and the train and both their colleges and yet still on a quiet street, in the neighborhood everyone wants to live in, and with its own garden! They couldn't believe their good fortune. 

And all those things were true. It's an adorable apartment and the rent is a good deal.  As they showed me the built-in closet, the new sink - and even a washing machine! - their eyes were filled with dreams of the life they will be sharing soon within those four walls. 

They weren't thinking about it being so small that only one of them can stand in that newly renovated "kitchen" at a time.  

That if two people sit at the table at once, they'll block the entrance to the bathroom.  

That the wonderful high ceiling is so high that they'll need a ladder to open the only window in the bedroom. 

That the garden is, let's be honest, a patch of dirt that will turn to mud in the winter. 

That they'll soon be practicing an extreme version of that new trend, "tiny living."  (And that, apparently, I'm going to be parking on the street for the next few years, my garage overtaken by wedding gifts they will have no room for!)

I left as enchanted as they are - not with the apartment, which is perfectly fine - but with them and with memories of my own first, adored, love nest, with its "balcony" (a wooden fire escape - in Chicago? Seriously?), kitchen cabinets that never closed, and bathroom ceiling that came crashing down. None of those faults ever mattered.

I remembered all our homes after that - despite all their faults, too, beloved.  We've moved around and circumstances have changed over the years. Still, each new home holds such promise of new chapters, new discoveries and lessons to learn.  It's like starting as newlyweds all over again, only better.

This is usually the point where our romance novels stop.  We close the book, having reached The End, just as the story is really beginning.  But having found a person you love and want to spend your life with, there's little more magical and exciting than putting together the home in which you begin your life, or a new chapter of your life, together.

The pigeons on my bedroom windowsill aren't on their first go-around.  They come every year. I've given up on ever opening that particular window. Why would I want to bother them? But each spring, it's like the first time. A new nest. A new set of hatchlings. A new future.

To all those June and other summer brides out there, here's to filling your new nests with lots of love and joy to last you many years!  

To those of us ensconced in our old nests, may they become ever more comfortable, and yet still fresh and new as time goes on.

Milou Koenings writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.  

Her sweet romance, Reclaiming Home, A Green Pines Romance, is available at Amazon. 

You can find her on her website, www.miloukoenings.com, on Facebook, or Twitter.

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