I have always loved staying home. In fact, for me the best part of leaving home is returning home.
Both my husband and I are hometenders. Although Bruce's playground is mainly the outside and mine the inside, we encourage and find delight in each other's efforts. We care about our spaces and recognize how those spaces support all aspects of our lives.
Loving our home and loving our time at home is not new for us, but has become even more important during this pandemic time.
Are there things beyond our boundaries I would enjoy doing right now? Of course, but the pleasures, simple pleasures, at home are abundant. Just for starters:
* The new bright and happy umbrella for the "Paris" garden. Now I can sit out there and read and write, even when the sun is blinding.
* Our rhubarb patch behind the garage. I made the first batch of sauce and a rhubarb cake this week. My mother always said, "Do not ever buy rhubarb," meaning you should always be able to find someone who wants to give it away.
* The herbs Bruce planted in pots on the patio. I complained last year that I didn't have enough basil to make more than one batch of pesto. That will not be the case this year!
* The red and white geraniums in the window boxes and big pots at the foot of the front steps. Could anything look any happier?
* A clean laundry/storage room. That was a task on my weekend list. See what I mean about simple pleasures?!
* An eclectic collection of coffee table books. I've decided this is a good time to enjoy the text, as well as the art work or the photographs in books we have collected over the years. I started with Pilgrimages by the renowned photographer, Annie Liebovitz and then a book I bought after our only trip to France almost ten years ago, Monet's Table, The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet by Claire Joyes. One of my favorite days during that two week trip was to Giverney, and I loved Monet's house, almost as much as the garden. This book brought it all back to me.
* Desk time. I've opened the windows and the skylight in the garret and over the gentle bubbling of my small fountain, I can hear the kids next door playing tag and the occasional barking of one of the dogs on our block. And the birds! Gradually, I am returning to my writing life.
Sometimes I receive a gift from someone else's house to mine. Our granddaughter stopped by the other day with cookies she had made, and we stood outside and talked. Plus, daily the letter carrier has delivered cards and notes from so many, expressing sympathy for the death of my father. And oh, how I loved the phone call from our son's best friend who wanted to know how we are doing.
Perhaps it seems trite to talk of pleasures right now. Do I sound like a Pollyanna? I know these days are challenging, and for some these days are scary and rent with loss and fear. I discount none of that. Opening the Sunday New York Times, its front page covered with the names of 1000 people who have died of COVID-19, was daunting, devastating. How grateful I am that soon after bringing the paper into the house, we could sit in the snug and participate in our weekly online worship service and be reminded that we each are the body of Christ.
Our homes are places of worship, too, whether we are used to praying in a church, a synagogue or a mosque.
And the pleasures, big and small, add up to a house filled with love.
I wish the same for you.
An Invitation
What in your home brings you pleasure right now? I would love to know.
We have restored the house to non-holiday order. As much as I love
all the Christmas decorations, how good it feels to put them away and discover a bit of space in the house. Arranging new vignettes and filling in shelves in a new way is a form of creativity for me, and I love shopping the house for a new look.
I often start with the table in the entry way.
And then fill the shelves of the old painted cupboard in the living room.
I wander from room to room, picking up a book here, a vase there. I test them, turn them, stand back and look. Nope, not quite right, and continue the process. Yes, I know it takes time--time when I could be sitting at my desk writing, but creating a atmosphere that is pleasing and interesting and unique to our home, the ways we live and open ourselves to others in this home is important to me.
Elizabeth Gilbert says, "...creative living is where Big Magic will always abide."
I suppose I could blame this on my mother, but, instead, I thank her. She liked to create change in her home, too. In fact, I remember her commenting once, and not in complementary way, about a neighbor whose kitchen table had the same centerpiece season after season, year after year. That didn't happen in our house. I loved seeing what was new on the family room mantel or coffee table when I returned home after an absence.
We moved frequently when I was growing up, and she and my Dad quickly created home for us each time we moved, unpacking boxes even before the moving van had shut its big doors and pulled away from the street. Just because a piece of furniture was in the living room in the previous house didn't mean that's where it would be in the new house. She looked at her possessions with fresh eyes and matched them to each new space.
I try to do that too.
Unlike my sister, I am not good with my hands. You won't find me at a sewing machine whipping up new curtains, and Bruce is the painter in the family. But I am an arranger. Re-arranger. (In a way that's what I do on the page, too.) I have a good sense of space and color, and our home is my playground.
Some may say this is a form of distraction, but this process doesn't take away from my writing or teaching time, but instead it feeds it, nurtures it, and along the way, energizes me.
Again, Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear:
Go walk the dog, go pick up every bit of trash on the
street outside your home, go walk the dog again, go
bake a peach cobbler, go paint some pebbles with
brightly colored nail polish and put them in a pile.
You might think it's procrastination but--with the
right intention--it isn't; it's motion. And any motion
whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will
always be drawn to motion.
For now everything has a place and I like the way the house looks and feels, but that may not be true by this time next week. In the meantime, however, I will be at work at my desk, playing with words and ideas.
An Invitation
Where does your creativity live and thrive? I would love to know.
An ah ha moment. As I was driving to Minnesota last week, I realized why I was not so eager to pack up and head west this time. True, it was minus something degrees and was doomed to stay that way the whole time I was there, but that was not the reason, at least not entirely. One of my intentions for the new year is to spend more time with my father, more casual and normal time, more one on one time, and this would be the first of those times in the new year. I enjoy being with Dad, so why had I lingered at home that morning and why had I taken my time packing for the three days in the apartment?
Ah ha! When my mother was dying of colon cancer, I spent a week every month with her and then longer when she was closer to death. I would leave our country sanctuary in Ohio and fly to Minneapolis on a Sunday morning and then return home on Friday evening. The decision to be with her at those times was intentional, knowing that each month I would more than likely see changes in her, but I was never sure what they might be and what might be required of me. How much less of her would there be and how much closer would we be to saying goodbye?
Ah ha! My intention to spend time with Dad on my own every month feels like that time with Mom and reminds me of the inch by inch grieving I did all those months, leading to the power punch grieving when she died. The difference is that Dad is in good health and doing well. Obviously, at 89 his death could happen at any time--this is no time to be an ostrich daughter-- but there is no current diagnosis driving my decision.
Ah ha! There were two tasks Mom always wanted me to do during my stays with her: clean the refrigerator and straighten the linen closet. "Your father doesn't know how to fold the towels." And along with having lunch with him, what was I planning to do during this visit? Clean the refrigerator and straighten the linen closet! The heart remembers more than we can imagine and just the thought of those tasks brought me back to those days, doing things that Mom could no longer do for herself, but remained important symbols of her role as Mrs Clean.
Both of those tasks were ways of saying, "Mom, don't worry. Your house will be cared for. Dad will be cared for." Straightening the linen closet, especially was almost a ritual. Refolding and smoothing and stacking. Piles of pink for the guest bathroom. Piles of pale blue for the master bathroom. I was stunned to see so many pink towels frayed and worn, but Mom was married to a certain shade of pink to match the wallpaper in that bathroom, and she couldn't find the right shade of pink in replacement towels. I made an executive decision and eliminated a towel or two every time I came. Not only were there stacks of those towels, enough for a girls' locker room, but Mom no longer opened that closet door.
And now for the blue towels. My sister bought Dad some fresh, thick white towels for his birthday this summer, thinking they would replace the worn, faded, and frayed light blue towels Mom favored in their bathroom. Mom has been dead for almost 10 years now, and he has used the same towels. Guess what we found on the floor of the linen closet? The white towels still in the box, just as Amy had given him. We chuckled and tsk-tsked and set about refolding and smoothing and stacking, but also eliminating the worst of the blue towels.
Later in the day my sister and I bought new blue towels. We didn't look at the price. We didn't even test for thickness or softness. Nope, we swarmed through the linen department like Goldilocks. This one's too grey. This one's too green. This one's too bright. This one's too dull. This one, this blue, is just right, close to what Dad expects to see when he opens the linen closet.
Ah ha! How much there is to learn about being in a different role in life--the daughter of an elderly parent. The daughter of an only parent. The daughter still missing her mother. The daughter seeing her father still missing his wife. Sometimes it is the simple things, the every day tasks, such as folding towels, that reminds us of how life changes and how life stays the same.
I am not fond of vacuuming. To be honest, I hate vacuuming, and lately, in anticipation of showings of our house, I have needed to vacuum frequently. Also, dust and keep surfaces clear of clutter and do laundry daily and, and, and ...... Along with meditating and writing in my journal, my current morning routine with its list of home tending tasks to complete often seems to extend into the afternoon. I am more than willing to perform these tasks, for it is something I can do to welcome potential new owners to this home.
Even if this house weren't for sale, however, I would still greet the freshness of the morning by sweeping the front porch, for there is something so basic, almost old-fashioned about sweeping, especially a front porch.
I imagine myself as a housewife of the 30's or 40's or even 50's, wearing a housedress and full apron, standing outside the front door with broom in hand. I survey this world in front of me and wonder who will come up the walk and cross this threshold today. Sweeping is convivial, for unlike washing windows, it is interruptible and encourages pausing for a casual conversation with the neighbor pushing a stroller or walking a dog. I listen to the birds chitter chattering, hoping for a piece of discarded thread or a fragment of lint for a nest in process. I think ahead to the end of the day when my husband and I will have dinner on the porch, sharing our day's in's and out's and perhaps later will sit in quiet companionship reading until daylight disappears.
I remember the front porch on the house where we raised our children. That front porch had a swing. The rhythm of the swing seemed to match the cadence of whatever I read to our young son. Our daughter and her boyfriend, now husband, posed for prom pictures while sitting on that swing. This porch should have a swing and a young family, too. Maybe it will someday.
I begin to sweep and sense how the sweeping signals moving on, not clinging to anything, except the present moment. Sweeping clears the space. Sweeping says, "This house is cared for." The Shakers believe that their daily work, even something as basic as sweeping the front porch, is a personal expression of worship. Gunilla Norris in her book of poetry, Being Home, says, "Prayer and housekeeping--they go together. They have always gone together. We simply know that our daily round is how we live. When we clean and order our homes, we are somehow also cleaning and ordering ourselves."
In cleaning and ordering ourselves, we become more open to the extraordinary in the ordinary and the grace of everyday life. Now, if I only felt this way about vacuuming!
I have always loved staying home. In fact, for me the best part of leaving home is returning home. 
* The new bright and happy umbrella for the "Paris" garden. Now I can sit out there and read and write, even when the sun is blinding. 
* The red and white geraniums in the window boxes and big pots at the foot of the front steps. Could anything look any happier?
