Rooms get tired, too. And habit keeps us from noticing. Our house has seen many seasons come and go. It has endured a lot of changes, too, poor thing!
The house used to have an attached garage, which we turned into a shipping room and sheet music warehouse (Remember sheet music?). Well, that is until our little music company outgrew the garage, and we built what we called the A-frame (which we also soon outgrew).
Our three kids were by then in need of rooms of their own, so we knocked out the wall of the garage and turned the garage into a family room. What was originally the family room and Bill’s old office with sheet music shelves along one side, became our bedroom with a small en suite bath. We took out the shelves and put in clothes rods, and, voila!, we had a closet.
A few years later, when we got three kids through college, we decided it was time build on a real bathroom with walk-in closets. We took out the sheet music/closet and had beautiful bookcases built in instead; we tore out the small bath room from the bedroom corner, and had room for a real chest of drawers.
Now, fast forward another twenty years. The carpet was tired (or maybe I was just tired of it); the chaise lounge that once belonged to my mother needed to be recovered. Our new bathroom mirrors told us that we had aged, too, with a few new wrinkles, dryer skin, and less hair. This revelation reminded us that we had gradually gotten used to our faces and the bedroom, too. We couldn’t reverse the changes we saw in the mirror, but we could do something about our tired bedroom.
We decided to take up the carpet that had refused to wear out, and replace it with a vinyl wood floor and area rugs. We called Ron Whitlow who has been our painter for thirty years (and his brother and father before him), and held a time in his schedule for new wallpaper and paint.
I ordered a big oriental rug for the middle of the room and went shopping for new upholstery fabric for the chaise. I ordered new shades to replace the broken one at the patio door and found a great deal on a velvet quilted bedspread and new set of sheets.
My mother was an artist who loved Japanese art and floral arrangements and passed that love on to me. Added to that was the bucket-list trip I was able to take a few years back with our daughter and her little son and our dear friend and mentor Ann Smith who was a missionary to Japan for twenty years. These influences drew me to a wallpaper with stems of Japanese cherry blossoms on a mint green background. Mother had given me years ago her trio of jade green iron geisha women which would sit beautifully on our antiqued bronze Ionic column shelf.
The hydrangeas around the yard were by now drying as the leaves fell, so I spray-painted them on the stem in shades of greyish mint, pale pink, and copper. When the paint was dry, I arranged them in a big silver urn with stems of silk cherry blossoms.
Finally, with everything done and the furniture back in place, the bedroom feels like a breath of fresh air every time we walk through. I, too, may be feeling weary on a given day, but I refuse to be anything but alive and wide awake as long as I live!
I remember a poem my artist-writer mother wrote in the inside of a great Webster’s Dictionary she gave me for my high school graduation. I carry this poem in my mind and now share it with you.
The Shepherd Friend
The sheep may know the pasture,
But the Shepherd knows the sheep;
The sheep lie down in comfort,
But the Shepherd does not sleep.
He protects the young and foolish
From their unprecocious way,
And gently prods the aged,
Lest they give in to the clay.
When the young have learned some wisdom
It is much too late to act;
When the old man knows the method,
He is less sure of the fact.
Ah, the Shepherd knows the answer—
The beginning and the end.
So, the wisest choice, my daughter,
Is to take Him as your friend.
Dorthy Sickal
©1988 Gloria Gaither
Hands Across the Seasons
Abington Press
