albertsperspective

As I read the newspaper this morning and was distracted by disturbing thoughts of a family disagreement in another house, I looked up and scanned the scene before me – our living room and connected spaces.

We sometimes talk about this as a place of clutter, but it is so much more than that. The mantle over the once fireplace and now unused wood stove holds family photos: great grandparents, grandparents, parents, ourselves, our children and children’s weddings, and our grandchildren.  The walls are hung with gifts of artwork, framed photos taken by family members, quilts made by my wife, artifacts from family history (like an old bamboo fly rod), and collections of framed pictures of children and grandchildren as they progressed through their childhood (here at age two, there at age twelve, here on a sled, there on a trip to a foreign land, and so on). The furniture is a hodgepodge collection of family hand-me-downs, items bought long ago, and things I made forty years ago or remade recently; the wide wood planks used in a recently made table had come from my wife’s grandparents’ farm and were stored in our garage for many years before being put to re-use in our living room. The furniture holds other things made or gifted by family members (a quilted table runner, a raku pottery mug with our son’s toddler-age handprint baked into it, a special olive dish from our daughter’s time in Spain) or inherited following the passing of grandparents (old railroad lanterns atop an antique china cabinet, canning jars, vases). All of this clutter says more than a little about who we are as a family. It is meaningful clutter, and it is somehow quite comfortable to be in the middle of it; it feels warm and reassuring. This is home.