Home Made

Today marks the beginning of week four of life in our townhouse. Although my energy had been steady during the packing-up days, I moved robotically through the mayhem of decisions, tasks -- all the logistics of packing and unpacking. I wasn't shut down, but it was wild. Last week, Jim and I enjoyed hearing the racket of the trash truck hauling off the last of our many boxes, so those time-pressured, numbing moving days are behind us. Our furniture, no longer hesitant, has settled into their rightful corners, and more than once, we've talked about how these last two weeks have brought back the childhood fun of playing house. 

That term, Let's play house was a welcome and frequent invitation throughout childhood. Of course, a shortened, coded version, more simply stated, let's pretend. You'd hear that and instantly enter an imaginative zone where you had to decide the situation and who you wanted to be.  Okay, you're in trouble, and I'll be your mother. Or, Today, let's be teenagers and make believe we are shopping.

I remember the day my sisters and I pushed open the jammed wooden door of our grandmother's chicken coop, long abandoned. Inside, we faced leaves, straw, brittle splinters of paint, broken furniture, cracked windows, webs, and the dried-out husks of insects. The thrill of possibility far outweighed the task of dealing with these vestiges of ruin. We were undaunted. Rags, we need rags. And a broom - Go ask Mama for her broom! 

While my sister, Beth, swept up debris, I stood at one of the windowsills and set upon what, on one level, became my first of many life callings: homemaking. I scrubbed at white paint flaking off dry, weather-beaten sills; I felt particularly daring as my rag whisked at tiny glass shards. Is this alright? I mused. This is dangerous. We worked for a few hours until it was time to go home; we traded ideas of what we might do. How about a chair for that corner, and we could get a bed to go over there. I had no idea what motivated us then, but when I think back to the joy of our absorption, I'm amazed at how innate the drive to create order out of chaos is. I'm also surprised that at age seventy-eight, the memory of that day is so clear. I know it as defining, and I may only have been four or five years old.

There was another time when we were older - fourth or fifth grade. It was summer at our lakeside cottage in New Hampshire. My sister, Lauren, and her friend Stevie had situated in our pine-needle-strewn yard. With sticks of all sizes, they created an elaborate two-dimensional house outline upon the ground. I was nearly two years older and, if at first I dismissed the project as child's play, their creativity won my amazement and respect as the project stretched into days. I can still see their intriguing outline of rooms outfitted with little stones, berries, leaves, pinecones, and twigs representing furniture, appliances - all the items that make a curated home. 

A year ago, I'd be staggered by the idea of packing up and leaving the house we moved to in 1977. I think of the decades we spent, the thrill of the hunt as we shopped for furniture, rugs, and art for the walls. Instead of collecting, we are culling, cutting back, and consolidating. These are days of distillation. The smallest loveseat from our previous house looks big in our new small space. Runners that had covered our hallways before now dress up the floors of our narrow living room. And it's all good; we love seeing these pieces that are so familiar enjoying new life in this whole new setting. 

In the course of moving, I've shed tears, to be sure, but the ease with which I've adjusted speaks volumes about the rightness – and the readiness – of change. Sometimes I want to take a word or phrase, and like a sponge under hot, steamy water, soap it up and wring it out. These days, house and home are two such words offering whole new meanings. Playing house, even at 78, continues to be a source of fun.

I have adjusted. . .