I sat on the raised fireplace hearth this morning and drank my coffee while I nibbled on some madeleines. We packed up the heavy furniture last night, and the only thing left are smaller pieces we can take with us on the back of a pick-up truck. It’s too soon to say goodbye.
The bitter coffee and the sweet cakes pretty much summed up my mood.
Last night, in the silliness that comes in the late hour after a long day, my son and I spoke loudly across the house to hear the echo. It was funny.
This morning as I look beyond the windows to the sunny day, I notice that what we’ve left behind is his great-grandmother’s trunk, filled to over-flowing with a lifetime, many lifetimes, of pictures. Of memories lovingly made and perhaps long forgotten. I call the dog and hear my voice echo again.
Everything is an echo as the memories of this room come back. When we moved in, there was a terrible baby blue carpet, freshly installed, so we kept it. There’s no accounting for taste in the 90s. It was the decade that spawned nylon track suits as acceptable attire. I know, I had a hot pink and teal one that I just unloaded at Goodwill.
We spent our first night in this home sprawled on that blue carpet, watching tv, and making little blanket pallets to sleep on. It started a family tradition of many pallet nights, with finger food dinners and family-friendly movies on Friday nights until those evenings were replaced with football games and school dances. Sigh. A lot of time has passed here.
We replaced the ugly blue carpet with bright wood flooring after the kids were grown.
I’m the one that’s blue today.
If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw my sad lament that my very fancy coffee maker caught fire. It was tragic, but luckily I caught it before it turned into a real problem. Let me rephrase that, it is neither tragic, nor a real problem, but it is inconvenient. I’m in the middle of moving. There will be no shopping spree in search of anything fancier than Mr. Coffee. Or not. Ain’t nobody got time for this.
But…there was that dark period in our marriage a few years ago when we both gave up coffee in a passive aggressive battle of wills that involved not being the one to go buy a new coffee maker. I turned to green tea. He turned to Mt. Dew. Life was simple then. Can you imagine a 30+ year marriage where this is the only memorable fight? Ha. Me neither, but that’s all water under the bridge.