This corner of our home was a favourite of mine until we had to pack up and move everything into storage last week. (We have a month before we can move into our new home). It was such an uncontrived spot where everything just found its place, and it worked.
My mother hung the picture frame on an existing hook the day we moved in, to keep it from getting damaged while everything else got moved around. I loved the empty space, so instead of filling the frame and placing it elsewhere as intended, left it like that. It reminded me to dream and hope: sometimes we have to give ourselves room to dream and then to push through the emptiness to get to what we have envisioned.
The model VW beetle was a gift from my brother in the UAE, to remind me of my first car, which was a bright yellow bug called “Noddy”. He couldn’t find a yellow one, but this worked so well with the butterfly painting, and reminded us of him and his family.
The miniatures had been tucked away in a box because there wasn’t a spot for them until I made the little table and benches. The space in the bookshelf became the perfect little ‘room’ for them. My eldest son was the one who encouraged me to finish the table. There always seemed to be other more important and less frivolous things to be doing – but he insisted that he thought this was important too. He was right. Life had become too serious for me, and creativity was taking a back-seat, which was frustrating. Trashing the kitchen counter during construction was worth it, not just for the satisfaction of seeing an idea come to life, but to show the kids how imaginations can be used in combination with perseverance, hard work and fun.
My Granny B’s last words to me were to express regret that she had spent so much of her life worrying about things – the length of her curtains, the colour of the new couches, how tidy everything was etc., when what mattered most is people and the time spent with them. She encouraged me to not spend my life worried about things, as she had done. So, in Granny’s honour, I don’t know how things will look in our new home, but am looking forward to serendipity doing its thing again. (and to many cups of coffee and tea with the people who pop in to visit).
