Goodbye home office, hello nursery
Originally published Sept. 24, 2017, in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y.
Goodbye, leafy green walls that welcomed me every morning.
Goodbye, framed paperback baseball photographs that Sarah bought to decorate the walls.
Goodbye, shelves that held my mementos, like my miniature baseball player statue and game-used ball, like the pen handed down from my grandmother and the awards won in my previous journalist life.
Goodbye, window over the parking lot below, which throughout the day would fill with cars, harried parents, stiff businessmen, and the toddlers fidgeting on a tether during a morning day care walk.
Goodbye, office. You were there in the back of the apartment, a sanctuary that kept safe my wanderings. Every night I’d retreat into your warm space and hammer out the words that connected me to the rest of the world. I’d spill crackers on the desk and brush them onto the hardwood floor, then spill water when filling the houseplants. That would go to the floor, too. You were lived-in, comfortable, safe. Even though you were obviously built on a slant, and even though the village fire horn blasted through your windows at least once a day, you were my place.
Hello, dining room. You’re in the middle of our apartment, a forgotten necessity but, let’s be honest, you’re more of an annoyance that connects the living room to the kitchen. But you don’t even do that correctly, for you’re simply a passage in a railroad-style home, a room that’s barely a room connecting all the other actual rooms. You’re a space, gray and dull, so we put a brown table in you and called you dining room.
Luckily we had that Steve Heller clock that we bought at Fabulous Furniture. That’s the first thing Sarah and I bought as a couple. It spiced up the gray walls and it’s still working well, ticking away the seconds, the minutes, the hours — oh God, the weeks.
Sarah removed the vinyl records from the wall, replacing them with family photos. Those photos are very different than the ones we first raised, and in a year they’ll again be very different. She found space for a few of those baseball photos, and we put up a bookshelf that she decorated with my books, a houseplant and a Newburgh Brewing Company growler. It looks like home. It feels like home. It makes me cry.
Hello, my new office, and while you’ll forever be a space in the middle of our apartment, you feel more like home every day. I still have trouble with the rug, but there’s a window nearby, and that also looks over the parking lot. The fall breezes will feel good.
Hello, nursery. You were once with leafy green walls and a desk, but now you have darker, deeper walls of gray, which tint blue in the right sunlight, the backdrop for a rainbow of color in every corner — turquoise here, yellow there, orange here, purple there.
Hello, crib, antique dresser and changing table, bookshelf, rocking chair and funny Ikea rug, which I bought for Sarah — well, for us, all of us.
Hello, soft cloths and musical Teddy bear, designed to nullify the fire horn and bring smiles to our faces.
Hello, tiny books that reveal the great mysteries, like the sound of a cat and the value of love.
Hello, new beginnings.
