One Room

2011-10-17T11:52:00.001-04:00

Where does your story begin? How far back in the telling do you need to go so that your reader can travel the path with you, understanding the essence of who you are, where you are going, and what you are trying to do? How important is the history of it all? As I compose the first post in a re-purposed blog these are the questions that pester me, but taking my cues from the very best storytellers I am going to just start with today, this moment right here, knowing that the rest will come, the details will fill out, and after a bit you will know what you need to know.

Today I am sitting in my living room, in our more-than-a-century-old house, staring at a pile of geranium leaves and bright red petals in the foyer that should really get swept up. The geraniums are inside because the forecast warned of frost and in my family geraniums are kept from year to year, sheltered indoors for the long winter months and moved outside once danger of frost has passed in the spring. Sweeping is on my to-do list. My to-do list these days grows instead of shrinking. Our house is like another member of the family, practically a living thing its needs are so great, but we are happy here and that makes the necessary work seem less overwhelming.

This room can tell you a lot about us. A bursting at the seams bookshelf lives in the corner, with more books at its feet. The furniture does not match because we have an 'acquired over time' design sense, perhaps more aptly described as 'estate sale eclectic'. There is a pile of yarn on the sofa next to me and more stashed in a drawer across the room, awaiting needles and hook. The art on the walls ranges from self portrait (mine) to abstract (our kids'), from landscape (a great aunt's) to fine art print (Childe Hassam, courtesy of The Hyde Collection, which resides in our little city). One of my grandfather's sculptures sits on an end-table, and there are photographs of our children with their foster families in Korea on the sideboard. The magazine rack holds This Old House, Better Homes and Gardens, Your Big Backyard, Ranger Rick, and KoreAm, as well as a battered but new copy of The Urban Homestead. A record player sits on an antique cedar chest in the corner and stacked next to it are vintage Sesame Street albums which see daily use around here. Next to the dining room table is a high chair, the next occupant of which is growing up little by little on the other side of the world and whose arrival is eagerly anticipated. Handmade curtains hang at the windows, a guitar pick lies on the table, and there is a keyboard stashed behind the wing chair. There are dogs snoring at my feet and a house rabbit munches on apple peels a few feet away. A stray measuring tape lies on the mantel beside a hair ribbon and through the windows you can catch glimpses of our little corner of this beloved little city.

This is us, in a room. Not all of us, to be sure, but a glimpse of who we are and what we like. Now, about those geranium leaves...

Little City Living

One Room