Chim - chim - in - ney!

Growing up in a family of mostly adults, I wondered "How in the world can he/she remember what happened in 19??!!!!" It seemed that anyone older than 30 could name a date and time of an event in their past. I sat hour after hour listening to stories of war, depression, deaths, births, marriages, and whispered divorces. What was it that gave my elders the uncanny ability to recite precise moments and experiences of their lives?

During the winter, we sat at wood stoves in my grandparents' house. The stove was the source of heat for the entire house. Let me back up...I guess it could have been a wood stove, but I distinctly remember a pail of coal sitting on the floor next to it...so it must have burned coal. This stove also served as the only cooking appliance and many children, parents,aunts, and uncles were fed from this stove.

My grandmother was part Cherokee and wore her hair in a gray twisted braid long enough to rival Rapunzel. I don't remember if she ever cooked from an electric or gas stove.

The house was always warm...sometimes, too warm. The smell from the burnt coal/wood would cling to my clothes and hair until the first opportunity to shed them in the basement of my own house. I love the smell of burning wood, but not so much when it is attached to my body.

Presently, my family and I live in a modest (by today's standards) two story brick traditional house. We've lived here for 10 years. It is the third house that my husband and I have owned, but the first house that was not new when we bought it. Built in the 70's ( 19 not 18)....we have experienced the joy of remodeling. It has been slow going...to say the least.

My first goal was to remove the eye sores......which included an entire house of slick shiny vinyl wall covering that would be right at home on the walls of a vintage PCB condo (Don't be offended, you know what I'm talking about!) Every single wall, in every room and hallway had the same exact paper. Another eyesore was the over abundance of ceiling fans. The house has 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, dining room, living room, kitchen, den, and breakfast room. If you are counting that is a total of 11 rooms. We had TEN ceiling fans. My sister pointed out that if they were all turned on at the same time, the house would lift right off it's foundation (Hence, the movie "UP").

One particular "eyesore" that I've lived with for ten years, is a circa 1977 wood stove insert manufactured by Wood Chief. It is a massive piece of black metal with brass details around the door and handles of the glass doors. The glass doors act as a barrier to separate the fire from the person who is trying to enjoy the crackling sounds and to keep them from feeling any amount of warmth while cuddling with a cup of hot chocolate. It was produced entirely to heat an entire house and I suppose roast a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Do you see where I am going with this? I have returned to my childhood AND I can recite the date and time or a specific event ......Winter of 1969, my grandfather died, and the grandchildren gathered in the kitchen by the coal/wood stove that heated the entire house! (Huh! How did that happen? How can I remember that - when I can't remember where my cell phone and keys are?)

So...to get the point of this story........I guess I had a point....not sure anymore.

I have been longing for ten years to remove the third eyesore and enjoy an open fireplace with a roaring fire. I was informed today by a Certified Chimney Sweep that that would probably not happen. But that it is safe, as is, to have a fire...even a roaring fire! Tonight, I hoping for a little cooler air as the sun goes down so that I can build my first fire in three years.

The Bad Girl's Club

Yesterday, I had lunch with a group of "girls" that were in high school together. Some of us were good friends then, some of us have just connected. There are two common denominators that pull us together. One is Facebook...where we can all meet and talk smack...living a persona that really doesn't play out so vividly in everyday reality. The second is our age. We're all in the same decade of our life cycle. When we are all together, either at lunch or on Facebook, we can free ourselves from the daily grind. Sarcasm is the escape...it rules in cyberland. One friend has said if a reader can't take it, then do her a favor and de-friend her. I agree. Don't get me wrong...while Facebook is a hotbed for our arrogance, ego punches, and laughter (usually at someone else's expense), it is also a place to bring our biggest concerns and worries. The group is the first place to post a request for help....it may come in the form of prayer or a ride home from the bar (lol). But in only seconds the home team forms the huddle and the one in need is protected.

So what does this have to do with my blogging about my growing up? Well, maybe not much or maybe a lot.

A few of these same "girls" have spent time at my house. If they didn't, then mutual friends did....Also, during our time together, it seems we have found another commonality....We were all raised in pretty much the same way...Small town values, middle class, hard working parents and so forth. We all had pretty much the same experiences. Where we went and who we went with often overlapped, and still do.

So when we begin telling our tales, we don't necessarily have to back all the way up to paint the picture...we have a foundation to lay the framework of a story, experience or wise-crack.

There was rarely a weekend at my house, when there wasn't a group of friends spending the night. Actually, if they weren't at my house, then I was at theirs. We rotated from house to house.

At my house, in Keith, which was way far out in the country....We piled our bodies arm to arm on the floor. Sometimes, we'd make a train, of sorts, by putting our heads on each other's stomachs to play the "ha ha game", until we were all giggling so hard that we didn't even know what was funny. My parent's bedroom shared a wall with mine, so most nights, my mother would threaten to come in and sleep on the floor with us to shut us up. Now that I look back, she probably didn't care that much and would've been happy to just go to the den and sleep on the couch....(or the untouchable living room). I imagine that it was my dad, who was saying to her, to make those girls shut up.......

While my room was small and not near as elaborate as the rooms I design today, it was my haven....my own little space that was MINE! I could do anything to that space. My sister and a lot of my friends took to putting up posters and using straight pins to tac ticket stubs, dried carnations from boys, pictures, ribbons..and whatever other memorabilia they collected to cover their bedroom walls. I didn't know what an interior designer was..and maybe it was undiagnosed OCD...but my walls were always freshly painted and un-adorned with anything but HODA lights(don't ask). I kept all the memorabilia too...but it was inconspicuously stuck to the BACK of the door.

I compared my home to my friend's and most of the time, I felt like my life was inadequate...They had new houses, showers, wall-to-wall carpet, subdivisions, pools, custom made draperies..... and some even had a telephone IN THEIR BEDROOM (We had a party line...google it!) It didn't occur to me that we were probably all doing the same thing...spending our best years comparing ourselves to others.

Now that I am in a position to assist young teens in designing their own rooms, I try to pull from my own experiences. Mostly, I encourage their parents to acknowledge that the bedroom is his/her own space. It's a sacred retreat where they do most of their dreaming, maturing and growing. It is important to me that the teen is able to enter a space that will reflect who they are now and who they will become.

The Deep Freeze

Today was the twelfth day of temperatures below freezing. I have spend more hours indoors than I have for a very long time. It brought to mind my childhood home......

We lived in a small two bedroom brick ranch over a full basement. The house could get very very cold...especially the wood floors. There was no central heat system and no fireplace (until later). Two portable heaters supplied enough heat for our family during the cold months. One was located in the hallway outside the bedroom door and the other in the kitchen. As I child and adolescent I enjoyed running from the kitchen into the den and then sliding down the waxed and polished hallway in my sock feet. If my little toe didn't get caught under the heater the hallway, I could dive into the bed just past the bedroom door. There are too many memories of my piggy toe bleeding and bandaged for these escapades.

The living room, which was reserved for adult visitors and holidays had a floor heater. This heater was also reserved for the same events. There was an accordion door separating the living room from the rest of the house...just to be sure no heat dare escape. Everyday, from first through eighth grade, I entered the living room (regardless of the temperature) and was quarantined for an hour to practice the piano. I guess my mother thought that if I was focused enough on my practicing, I might generate enough heat to forget the frigid temperatures. It's no wonder that it took eight years to complete only TWO music books...with one of them being "Teaching Little Fingers How to Play". My frozen little bleeding toes never had to used the piano pedals, since I did not progress far enough to know what the pedals were actually for. Bless Ms. Joiner's pointed toed high heels and her heart too....she tried so hard to teach me.....She had no idea what obstacles I faced to learn to play that damned piano.

It was my sister (six years older), Teresa, that excelled. She could play The Fairy Wedding Waltz as if she had been taught by one of the great masters. Her fingers glided over the ivories. It was my mother's dream for us to make it to the stage, I believe. What a disappointment it must have been, watching me eat my carnation corsage while waiting to go onto the recital stage.

But, I digress...........

I can feel the winter chill in my childhood home as I sit in my present home wrapped in a down comforter. This house is drafty. It's colder in some rooms than others in spite of central heat. The wood floors are icy. There is a "Living Room" which is home to the same Duncan Phyfe sofas that my mother forbid us to touch. Although I should add - they reflect a rather trendy retro style, due to my amazing design skills (lol). Appropriately, my sister kept the piano.

In many ways, my present house is a mirror of the one I grew up in. While is it a few decades younger and a few square feet larger, it is a home. It's warmed...not so much by electricity and/or gas, but by the movement and living of a family.

Pinestraw Walls

Growing up in the country, I was forced to use and develop my imagination. Neighbors and friends lived miles apart, so my best friends were imaginary. Linda and I played together for years in the woods, hills, and valleys behind my house.

Areas of the woods were previously named by my older sister. If you entered the woods directly behind my house and hiked down the hill to the stream running between two hills...then crossed the stream over a fallen tree trunk..you would enter Mercury Palace. It was beautiful and magical...Small purple flowers peaked through the moss that covered the forest floor. Light danced through the treetops and sparkled in the stream...then reflected on the leaves that moved with the rhythm of the breeze. This was a land of All Things Good. But....if you crossed the pasture where my grandfathers cows grazed and tip toed through the creek behind his house...you would pass the dairy barn and enter a forbidden section of property - Egypt Bottoms! It was most certainly a Land of Death. Animals that died of disease (or whatever) were left in this area to rot or be dragged off by the cyotes. Skulls and various bones littered the landscape. Tall trees heavy with large dark green leaves shadowed the ground and blocked the sun from peaking through. Only a double dare would cause a child to enter the Land of Death.

It was in this compound that my passion for interior design was nurtured. My houses were contructed from the elements of nature that were available to me. Pinestraw was used to mound up into rows for walls. Soft moss carpeted the floors of my houses, while exposed roots served as chairs or headrests. Often I was lucky to come across a treasure. An empty bottle or can that had been tossed into a ditch would find itself displayed with a purple aster on a large rock where I served Linda a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I've never stopped designing places to nest....for myself and for others. It's been decades since I've been to Mercury Palace................How I would love to gather Pinestraw once more..........