Tag Archives: Home

The Perfect Dream

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One of the few things in life that are perfect, are dreams.  Another thing that is so, are fantasies, but these things are truly perfect and exciting only because they have a seedy temptation to them.  So, being pure of mind, body, and spirit, I turned to thinking about the perfection of dreams.  I found only one commonality to each and all, and that is that no answer can be made to the question of a dream.  They are perfect and the only answer is, “yes.”

Often, the best dreams don’t even need to come true to be valued and honored, and cherished for life.  They exist in a constant state of excitement, never becoming sullied, or soiled, or destroyed, or replaced (unless to great reason).  They will often also morph with time, keeping pace with our growing age.  I have often labelled my dreams, calling them code words or names, like love, honey, home, friend, trust, fun, and remember.  I know what I mean, and if I am speaking with someone, perhaps a friend, and I talk about these, the greatest things in my life, I will very willingly, describe to great detail what it is all about.

So, today, a day like most other days in my life, I had time to be inside of a coffee shop, with all the bustling business and the coming and going of clientel.  I had time to myself and started to make notes about a discussion that had gone on earlier in the week.  We were trying to create  something of perfection inside the home, specifically the living room.  And, the key word that came up was dream.  All things led to this central word: “home, perfection, marriage, love, longevity, money, children, history, war and peace, and care.”  Why this list of ten words?  It was the most inclusive way to explain how each and every single person can look at their living room, in their home, and understand, just by the central code word, “dream.”

A place to live in, a place to sleep in, a place to fall in love in, a place to have fun in.  These are easily the things that happen in this hallowed room of ages and ages.  People take care of their living rooms, knowing that strangers and lovers and everyone else in between show up here, to meet, to greet, to discuss, and to arrange and to make deals.  Everything from life to death is discussed here, and if someone were to try to destroy or sully the sanctity of this room, with, say, a mention of the cost of money, then may they be banished, permanently, from this hallowed place.

Children are easily welcomed here, on condition that they behave.  If someone under the age of eighteen wants to lounge on the furniture, or jump on it, say, then, these children will have to either choose the family room of the basement, where the rec room is.  It is from these strange and foreign rules that the first idea of the dream of the living room is born.  “What is it that happens in such a forbidden place?”

Sometimes, the living room is almost like a “hallowed” place.  There sometimes are strict unspoken rules about entering and using it.  All a mother has to say is, “Don’t go in,” and any son and any daughter will not venture in, until, say, they have proof that they are smart enough to enter.  A graduation of some sort, or the purchase of that first real coffee table book of some real, serious, substance, even though it is a coffee table book.  Sometimes, turning eighteen is all a son or daughter needs to enter the barred place.  They move out and when they come to visit, they will walk into the living room, to peer at the glass cabinet, the “corner filler” of the three panel screen filled with family photos, or plunk a few keys on the upright piano.  They become automatically allowed to walk in and sit on the furniture, until mom invites them to eat something and drink something for afternoon snack and tea.  And, in this way, the sanctity, the dream, is not demolished.

The living room is misnamed by most people.  “Sitting room, the guest room, the front room.”  In the past, it had the best fireplace that could warm the room quickly and keep it at a comfortable temperature.  It held things of importance and value.  It was the right size, the best size, to be of the most comfort.  The rest of the house was not built with these specifications, where the need for room and space for use were the only determinants of size and comfort.  Even in this day, often the “living room,” is just one of those less used rooms.  Perhaps for the location of the room.  Perhaps it is just that one additional room that no one really has a use for.  Perhaps it is because mother has put so much China and figurines and silver plated finery into the room that it is dangerous to even turn around.  Even the basement has more use.  Although it is cold, even freezing, for most of the year, the size of the basement makes it a fun, dark, and imaginative place.  If anything could get broken down there, it wouldn’t matter.

Now, I remember shopping for the first house I could own.  We attended all the new house developments first, which allowed us to see new designs in the reality of walking into model homes.  The houses were gorgeous.  Often, the architects moved the rooms around, into different places, sometimes in a very imaginative way.  I felt like I was walking into a life-size dollhouse.  Sometimes, I was able to be appreciative of these innovative changes, but most times, I felt like I was inside those games where blocks are moved randomly around until a picture emerges.

We ended up buying a sixty-year-old house that we renovated, updating the wiring, the plumbing, and removing some of the walls.  It was expensive, but it was worth the cost and the incredible  way it was comfortable.  Even though it was built more than half-a-century before, the time-tested, the first, the intuitive way, seemed much more likeable than the fancy sizes and innovative placement of any of the new living rooms we saw.

The next change is coming.  And, like a busy ant or busy bee, I am already thinking ten to twenty years ahead.  We will have to down-size.  My criteria?  That the apartment have a living room.  I dream about this perfect apartment, as I am excited by change and look forward to being in the next place.  I actually have very few of the details understood, but I am finding that I am attracted by the idea of retirement.  I feel that being in a bright, roomy, place with complete access to all areas of home is how I imagine retirement.  Perhaps this home will be one large, enormous, living room.  Now, that would be quite the golden gem, quite the perfect dream, to own!

The World of Paul Frank and Hamsters

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My mom likes my Paul Frank PJ’s.

My hamster is awake all night.  It bit me at the pet store before I decided to buy it–then I bought it.  Even though the teeth are sharp, the size of the tooth cause more pain than a needle at the doctor’s office.  The blood quickly beaded and I had to hold the bit incision, covering myself in blood.

My mom claims there were no cute things when she was a child, and she always say how lucky we are that there is so much softness and fun, as if childhood never ends.

Paul Frank is a monkey–mostly he is all head and mouth.  He is always laughing, sometimes eyes closed, sometimes eyes open.  His image is printed always or embroidered on something soft–Pajamas, backpacks, sweatshirts.  I always see Paul Frank on the adults who never grow up.

I am fully, tragically, in love with Paul Frank–I have no picture for you, but if you see him, by yourself–you’ll know it is him.  Mostly, I think  I laugh at the people who wear Paul Frank.  It is daring–and if you are a grandmother, then I think only your grandkids take you seriously.

Now, in our house, I am surrounded by monkeys and hamsters.  Even if I didn’t want Nibbles and Paul Frank here, my kids would’ve found some way to bring it all into the house.  I sometimes think my kids and their friends hanging out at our house, love the things they trade and share more than their parents.  They clean up after themselves very well when it is they are having a good day trading secrets and just looking cool in each other’s eyes.

I worry about situations like these.  I lose track what it is they are doing, and what it is that they own.  They have some money to spend now, and if my son doesn’t come and show me his convenience store purchases, I worry.  I still dress him….  He will be in the “perfect” store, and we will try on sizes until we get it right.

Surprisingly, I overheard my daughter talking with her friends in the backyard.  I just happened to walk by the open back door and heard her say that she thought I was cool.  It was one of the most gratifying days of my life.  She is still young, but she is very well-versed in things cool.  I will always think that she is cool.

Even when I begin to imagine all the things that could be made in my children’s lives, filling it all with fun, learning, and life, I sometimes scare myself.  What if they contract an incurable disease?  What if an accident were to happen, and they end up paralyzed for life?  They look so perfect now…  the things that they grow through are nothing like the disasters I have foreseen in others….  I’d be overjoyed if they could make it to adulthood without the most frightening failures of life happening to them.

So, now, back to the issues of monkeys and hamsters.  We share everything.  Everything in the house belongs to “our family.”  We try not to be strict and draconian.  They will grow into the stage where they will try to hide things….  and I do not encourage that age.  I want them to feel free enough to bring up those things that kids will sometimes hide.  So, yes, “our pet hamster,” named “Nibbles” in a communal naming spree, is shared.  We all take care of Nibbles, which allows me, my daughter, and their father into my son’s room to take care of Nibbles.  We ask permission, to “take Nibbles for a walk” and we will take turns cleaning the cage and refilling the food.

I get to look cool on my weekends with the kids.  My t-shirt with Paul Frank’s happy face recognizable instantly by my children, my mother, and, of course, my husband, who thinks it is just juvenile of me to keep Paul Frank around the house.

Right now, my daughter just finished planning a birthday party for Nibbles.  She drew a picture of it and showed it to me. It immediately went up on the fridge.  She has asked me, since then, when a good day is to have the party?  I don’t really know, but I do keep telling her, tomorrow.  She thinks I delay too long, and I think that the days pass by so quickly, that I’m afraid that I will forget them.

I don’t think there will ever be a day when we will take Paul Frank, or, hamsters, out of the house.  They have come in, and I think that they are staying for life.  For now, if the Dollar Store is not selling hamster-sized tea cups and balloons, we will have to keep delaying the birthday party.

A Day At the Cottage

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I am thinking back to late last summer.  I am sure it was late August, and how I was driving, alone, in my car.  It was not an accident that I was alone …  And dangerously so, since the time was at the night when evidence is easily lost.  But I was not thinking of criminals accosting me just as the lucky innocent one.  I was lost in thought of the day I had spent just three hours north of Toronto at a lake-front cottage.  The fact that I was also dangerously close to the limit of blood alcohol allowed while operating a motor vehicle, did not occupy my mind or my thoughts.  I actually did not feel intoxicated.

Well, I am sure it had passed midnight.  Just before I got into my car to drive off, I could hear the crickets.  The lake gave off a warm breeze, and the smell of fresh water, as it carried a fleeting scent of wood ash from our open fire just on the shore.  We were lingering on the lawn, talking, refusing to let go of the perfect day that had miraculously been made to happen.  A lot of slow words, sudden laughs, smiles, and shifting weight, back and forth, as the group of us lingered.  We were tiring, but let the energy of sun, drink, food, and fire keep us going.

The radio was tuned to Public Radio….  The talk was long over with, and now, the music of musicians, daring and experimenting, and creating the sound, the phrasing, the pause, the surprise, of some of the jazz-like instruments used for finding musical pleasure….  Well, that was what was on the radio.  I wouldn’t know if the musicians were in fact intoxicated….  But it sounded like it.

As I remember, and mention again, I was alone in my car.  It was comfortable, having been heated by the sun all day long, the interior was now cooling in the cool wind blowing from the speed of the car on the highway.  I kept looking at the speedometer even though I kept an even pressure on the gas pedal.  It was accompanied by my gaze along the highway.  There were not, few cars, but there were in fact, quite a few cars out with me.  There were many, many trucks, out when there was less congestion.  These were the things that frightened me.  The size of the trucks, the sound of their working engines, and the fact that passing a truck felt like King Kong brushing up against me.

I was in this state, probably at three in the morning.  I did not have any pressing engagements the next morning….  And, being on vacation, I was looking forward to quiet and relaxation.  I thought I would catch up with reading, with music, with friends, and with a few new recipes that I could try in the space of a few hours.  I was thinking these thoughts, again.  The first time and the last time I had thought and reviewed my list of vacation activities was the week beforehand when I was in my office at work.  Then, I was full of hope and optimism at the coming time and I was congratulating myself on organizing myself so well so as to have everything I was planning, working out well.

I would be home in an hour.  And I was feeling relaxed, which, coincidentally, was allowing me to stay awake at this unusual hour.  As I got closer to the city, there were fewer cars on the road.  Since the highway is smoother and there is more space, I began to become brave, and stepped on the gas pedal a little deeper to rush home.  I was feeling the lateness and the more than almost twenty-four hours since I last slept.  I did note to myself that I could very well pay a speeding fine of half the cost of the food and drink spent during the day, but I also thought that I would like to be at home soon.  So, foot on gas pedal, radio on loud, and a racing heart accompanied me down the last stretch of highway towards home.

The day was great.  I loved being close to earth.  Thinking about it now, six months later, I will mortgage my home three times over, and, even, if all there is left on that lake is a piece of rock, I will buy that piece of rock, and build my cottage on it!