Changing one thing changes everything

A few months ago, a friend gave me the top half of her Stickley hutch--a beautiful collector's piece with leaded glass doors.  In my low-ceilinged house, I put it on the floor like a book shelf and it added glamour to the room. I filled it with colorful bowls and books and some Lego houses I made.

Years before, she gave me a Pakistani rug--which because I already had a white shag rug in the only place large enough for it, I'd put the far more valuable rug on the screened porch.  I decided today to take the Pakistani rug to the cleaners and retire the white shag rug.  I moved the coffee table out to the writing casita and now the room looks much bigger.

Doing that made me organize all my drawers and my closet, then take a bag of clothes to Goodwill. Doing that made me move lamps around and wash the now-bare concrete floor on the porch.  Chairs from one space moved to other spaces, my version of musical chairs.  And now--if I weren't so tired from reading and watching movies and moving things around--I'd paint the living room wall a light blue.

My neighbor across the street, Allen, died a few months ago.  There is a For-Sale sign out front, and his children are busy hauling away furniture.  I saw his old faded floral sofa on a truck today,  and I watched from my window as folded rugs were piled into the truck.  On the curb were framed pictures of his trips for people to pick up for free.

I remember how Allen loved those pictures, and I remember how he used to take me out to dinner and movies when I first moved here.  He was a curmudgeon, and he had nothing good to say about political liberals--but he made an exception of me.  When we went to fancy restaurants, he was newly widowed and I newly divorced. He told me stories about his wife, about his house--the house he was born in, the house he lived in, as it turned out, his entire 86 years.

"Hello, Sweetheart!" he used to call from his side of the street to mine.

The last time I saw him, he said, "We ought to go out to a movie sometime."  He paused, looking confused.  "I hate to tell you this, Sweetheart, but I can't remember your name."

Seeing a big truck rolling away filled with his furniture, I wondered: where would they land?  Who would treasure what he treasured?

The things we keep and move around in our houses tell the stories of our lives.  With every new acquisition, every gift, the story changes.  Winston Churchill said, "We shape our dwellings, then our dwellings shape us."