New Bedroom

Why would I leave my pretty upstairs bedroom, with its adjoining bath, to sleep on the narrow converted sunporch next to the kitchen? Why would I exchange my queen sized bed with its dust ruffle and matching comforter and pillow shams, its three hundred dollar iron headboard and footboard, for the cast-off double bed abandoned at Sydney's falling-down house in Quoddy village? Why use a beat up three drawer bureau rescued from the cellar of my Washington Street house instead of the heirloom seven-drawer maple piece from Phil's family? Well, I suppose there are many hidden reasons known only to Alice, though she has shared some of these with me. The others involve my desire to recreate the one-story atmosphere I had in my last house, the ease of letting the dogs out when I get up in the morning, and the idea of saving money on the heat next winter (assuming the room is still there then). It is a non-permanent, camp-like feel that for some reason has always apealed to me. There is something unnerving about permanence, something scary about the idea of forever. I like to have my eye on the exit door.

If you allow yourself to think about forever, you will either kill yourself or be agonizingly disappointed.