I went to bed last night with the windows open in a bedroom in a house my husband has spent years building and perfecting. Last spring he finished a new master bedroom and bathroom off an expanded living room, growing our home as our family grew with the idea that we are a house for hosting and living-room cartwheels.

I snuggled down next to my husband and listened to the sound of him breathing while he slept in the bedroom he designed, equal parts grateful and in awe of his capabilities, always. His attitude has always been something along the lines of “I didn’t know how to do it until I tried to do it.” This place he’s built is a result of that quiet try, that confidence and the tenacity to just do it himself.

The next morning, I woke up to him sneaking out to work on other people’s houses, a business he created after years worn down in the oilfield. I rolled over to catch a few more blinks, noticing how the sky was beginning to turn pink with the touch of the first moments of sun. I thought I should get up, rise with it, drink my coffee and start on a writing project, but I slipped back to sleep for a moment while the world lit up.

And I woke again to the sound of squirrel chatter, his obnoxious, angry squawk rising above the hundreds of bird species singing their morning song, the breeze rustling the full-grown leaves and a truck kicking up dust on the pink road.

And although I couldn’t hear it, I thought about the swish of the horses’ tails in the pasture, the buzz the flies make around their ears and the soft nicker in their throats when I approach with a grain bucket.

I thought about the cattle pulling dew covered green grass from the ground, munching and chewing and bellowing low for their calves.

I thought about the croak of the frogs in the dam, the familiar sound I fall asleep to each night we let the windows open and the air in.

I thought about the plop of the turtle leaving his rock for a swim in the dam. I thought about the howl of the coyote and the sound of the dogs crying back.

I thought about my fingers squeaking across the strings of my guitar, sitting out on the chair under the small oaks, working to make a melody.

I thought about the sound of my husband’s breathing and the words he says out loud at night when the world is sleeping, and so is he. I thought about what he dreams about.

And then I thought about the silence in this house as I lie listening to the world I was letting in through open windows, silence between walls that have absorbed the noise of saw blades spinning, voices discussing dinner, crying over tiling projects and laughing at the memory of the stupid kids we used to be. Soon it will be buzzing with the chatter of our own kids, waking up and pouring cereal and humming to themselves and arguing and painting and playing. It’s summer, so it won’t be quiet or clean in this house for months, or, more realistically, years. Squeals and laughter and music and questions and silliness, God willing, bouncing off the walls. In the evening, little by little my extended family will pop over to check in, my little sister and her daughters coming to play, my dad on his way from checking cows, my mom coming home from town, and they will stay long enough for supper and it will be loud in this house with stories and “watch this,” and “sit on your butt and eat,” and the scrape of forks on plates and “this is good Jess, thanks for having us over” and a little light arguing over the card game the girls picked for us all to play and that is what he built this place for. All of this.

When everyone heads home the sun will be sinking below the horizon, but I will pop out anyway for a quiet walk in the hills before dark. When I get home, I will find my husband sleeping on the couch while our daughters lay in the crook of his arm and draped across his legs, the television reflecting the light of other peoples’ stories off his scruffy face.

I will switch it off and gather our daughters for their own beds before opening the windows in our new bedroom to let the stars in. I’ll fall asleep to the sound of the frogs, thinking about all the mornings to come in this house, the sounds of Christmases and birthday parties, failed dinners and dancing in the living room, conversations with friends, fights about bills and schedules and time, sobs about missing someone and laughter about having just what we need in a house he built with the windows open…