Rooms

I am sure this post will be all over the place because I am writing partly to rest for a minute, but also because the work I am resting from has made me think of so many things I want to write about. On Monday morning the painters are coming to paint the front porch floor and then our dining room and library. We have lived in this house 13 years and right before we moved in we painted the whole house inside. Little by little over the years most of the house has been repainted. The kitchen was gutted and remodeled, Jon’s room was redecorated as he got older, etc. The outside of the house has been painted twice in those thirteen years. Somehow the dining room and library have never been repainted and the years have taken their toll. Actually I have caused most of the issues. You guys know I love to move furniture which means I occasionally bump the walls and when you move furniture you often have to move the pictures on the walls so there are lots of holes in my walls. As I have redone rooms I have cut down on the moving of pictures because I now only hang art made locally by people I know or have a connection to, and I am more careful where and how I hang it. After these rooms are painted I will edit what I hang and do it more thoughtfully. For now, the walls in those two rooms look like Swiss cheese.

In the library I had to take everything off of our built in bookshelves. Not only do we have a ton of books but those shelves house mementos and pictures that made me continually stop and remember times gone by. Two book shelves hold all of my children’s books from when I was a preschool teacher. I had many children’s books from when Jon was little and as a teacher I more than tripled that section of the library. I have shelves devoted to cookbooks and two others devoted to decorating. I have a shelf that houses all of my personal journals from when I was 8 years old until today. And another shelf of Bibles and other faith based reference books. Across the room is my collection of scripts and plays as well as mementos from a lot of the plays I have either been in or stage managed. Pictures, programs, posters, notes, gifts, and more that have accumulated from my times on stage. I have a section of autographed books that have come from many different places. Some were gifts, some from Young Author’s Conference at Hall Kent Elementary, some from book signings I attended. Again, the collection is much larger than I realized!

I stopped to read sections of books or to look at a program from a show I remembered fondly. I pulled down figurines given to me from students I have taught and youth I had mentored.  I took down all of my crosses, again, a huge collection that covered two walls and mostly came from past students, friends, and family. Once people know you collect something, the collection grows exponentially. As I took each one down I tried to remember where it came from and who gave it to me. Most of the time I could see the person in my mind as they gave me the gift, a few I had no clue where they came from.

Behind my collection of sculptures made by my son through different phases of his childhood, I found a children’s book propped up on a stand. I had forgotten about this book. It is called “The Last Dance” by Carmen Agra Deedy. I was so fortunate for 7 years to assist in the media center of Jon’s elementary school. I met great people, helped kids to find books and do research and helped with shelving books, checking out, the Young Author’s Conferences each year and book fairs. Book fairs were always expensive but I LOVE BOOKS! I found “The Last Dance” at a book fair and bought it to give to Tim for Valentine’s Day. Although a kid’s book technically, it has much more meaning for adults. I stopped to read the book this morning and found the following quote:

“…every human being has the right to three things: To Dance. The great thing in life is not so much to dance well, but whether one is willing to dance at all. To Sing. Even if you sing off-key. The crow has as much right to a voice as a nightingale. To tell stories. Those we love are never really gone as long as their stories are told.”

The other thing I found that I didn’t realize I had “lost” was my Baptism certificate. Not from when I was a baby because I was not baptized as a baby, it was from 16 years ago. Even the kids at school were probably baptized before I was. I began going to church with Tim almost thirty years ago but I waited to be baptized. Even my son was baptized 9 years before I was. I saw no reason to rush into anything!

So I am exhausted- I have moved books, taken down pictures, moved furniture, pulled the ivy off of my porch and fought wasps. But I feel so blessed to have known so many people, done so many shows, owned so many books and experienced so many things. Sometimes you have to pull your rooms apart to see all of the wonderful things that you walk past every day.