Living Room

I re-arranged the living room again and here is a flattering picture of it. I can't count the incarnations of this room, or any other in any house I have lived. I don't know why I feel a recurring craving to rearrange things . I have always liked being in unfamiliar places, and perhaps this is my way of keeping my environment somewhat unfamiliar. I used to move every year or so to a different house, but my ability to do that is almost non-existent now. I have planted myself here with dogs and chickens and a garden. There is too much now that can't go with me. My options have shrunk almost to none. Once in awhile I think about going somewhere else, but it is a fleeting idea. I love my house and its location. I can have everything that is important to me. My landlady is more than any tenant could ask for. I have the freedom to treat this place as my own. It feels like my home in a way that no other place has.

The house where I lived when I was married and bringing up the kids was a wonderful big white house built in 1845. It was on a tree-lined street across form a huge park that was once a town common. The front doors were double, with etched glass, and the carved newel post in the front hall was mahogany, with a once gas fired chandelier hanging over it from the ceiling on the second floor. There was an oriental carpet on the stairs, and an upstairs hall as big as my living room is now. There was a pantry next to the kitchen with built in cupboards and drawers, and a little sink. One living room had a big bay window overlooking the park, and the room across the hall held our baby grand piano. The dining room looked out on a little fenced-in yard between the house and the garage, which was once a carriage house and had a cupola on the roof. We owned that house, but I always felt we were guardians of it rather than owners. It seemed a privilege to be there for a time, yet it seemed more permanent than our own lives.....a place where people came and went over the generations while it remained, unchanged. I loved it, and still do, but I was more a tenant there than I am here. Despite the fact that this house is almost as old as that one, this is a down to earth house in a down to earth town. This is where I am comfortable and happy.