So I lost myself in the living room
last week.
It started with the coffee table, a
nondescript brown monstrosity with which Jake inexplicably fell in
love. I'm not sure, something about the scrollwork. By nightfall on
Saturday it was there, taking up every last inch of space, buffeted
by an ugly green couch and unusually low rocking chair, anchored by a
black shag rug. I despaired. We have lived here for three years and I
have never been able to get the living room quite the way I like,
despite my numerous valiant attempts and hours upon hours of manual
labor on Jake's part.
48 hours later, glaring at the coffee
table and lamenting the Patriots' recent loss with back-to-back
episodes of Glee, came the revelation: Paint. Paint fixes everything.
The next night, a dark, windy one worthy of Halloween itself, I
rushed to Home Depot, returning home just in time for Jake to leave
for work. Soon I was surrounded by pieces of wood furniture splayed
out on various sheets, awaiting their magnificent transformations. I
was utterly alone and it was lovely. I turned on some music and
picked up the sander. Then the power went out and Liam started
screaming.
By the time painting actually occurred
the following evening, I had ordered two new slipcovers for the couch
and commissioned the man who actually makes the money for this stuff
to repaint the living room walls, too. We put the kids to bed and
worked together over glasses Shiraz (me) and Jones soda (him),
Smartfood, and pretzel M&Ms. It turned into a pretty sweet little
date night. Jake and I truly like to work on projects together, which
is probably on my top ten list of favorite things about our
relationship. Also, it makes up for our disparate tastes.
By the following weekend, I was looking
with pride upon a whole new room. What an accomplishment. It felt
worthy of Better Homes and Gardens, I thought. I was a domestic
goddess, I thought. And then, Ohmygoodnesswhathashappenedtome, I
thought. Because I don't do domesticity.
I thought.
My mother spent years trying to get me
to cook. My sister and I made meatloaf for dinner one night when I
was 10, which went so well that she's now a vegetarian for life. When
I was 14, I made chili, coolly chatting with a boy I knew while
dumping in approximately ¼ cup of basil. Yes, basil. In chili. For
years afterward I avoided cooking expressly because older generations
had considered it woman's work, and I intended to be above all that.
(You might think sucking at it would come in to play, too, but no.)
In truth, I didn't get into cooking until we made friends with men
who cooked, and then I decided I could do so without being subject to
traditional gender roles. By then I had developed an interest in
nutrition and clean eating, too, so cooking felt like a healthy
lifestyle choice, not a domestic chore.
The state of the laundry in our house
is perpetually pathetic. The bathrooms are cleaned only when company
is expected. Dusting doesn't even cross my mind. Ever. I think that
deep down, I've always kind of liked that about myself. I have
generally regarded domestic chores as petty, and low on the priority
list. As in, there are bigger concerns in the world, and I have no
desire to be bogged down by the very, very small ones like window
cleaning.
Yet there I was, exulting in my newly
light and airy living room, loving this corner of our home that I had
made into something nice. Wondering, who is this person? And facing a
dawning realization – again – that my motivations, my
expectations, and even my life decisions are influenced by so many
things I would rather not see factor. I like decorating. I
like cooking. Yet for years I resisted either – and the
reason was so that I wouldn't be a “type”? Seriously? Yikes.
Okay, actually that revelation came
several days later, and was the point at which I began to reconcile
myself to loving the living room – and myself – without
reservation. I can't help but feel like I'm in the midst of a
significant paradigm shift which has very little to do with the
living room, and with much left to be worked out. The ramifications
of it all are simultaneously exciting and intimidating. Yet
incredibly - dare I say it? - liberating.
To be continued . . .
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