Bless This House

I spent my Thanksgiving holiday in an empty house. This adventure was not planned, but was instead an unexpected turn of events thanks to an unavailable moving truck and an extended moving "window of delivery" - which conveniently fell after the Thanksgiving holiday - for promised delivery of said furniture. The original weekend plan had been to visit my Aunt and my Grandmother in their brand new house in Pennsylvania, one they were to move into a few days before Thanksgiving. Instead, I learned Wednesday night, when I met my Dad at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, that there was no furniture, a lot of tacky wallpaper that needed removing, and an air mattress with my name on it.

We were fortunate to have a few items - like a kitchen table and some outdoor patio furniture. My cousin, who lives nearby, brought over a coffee pot, bath towels, linens, and the like. The Thanksgiving dinner came together somehow - rather miraculously actually - complete with wine served in plastic cups for all 21 guests. We spread tablecloths over the two tables we had, squeezed all the guests around in an otherwise empty room and we ate well.

I imagine the lesson I'm supposed to take away from a weekend like this is how you don't really need furniture to be a family; it's not the objects but the people that make a house a home, etc. Well...that wasn't exactly the thought I took away from my visit.

By the time I got back to my apartment on Sunday I was desperate for a real, elevated bed, a sofa, some pictures hanging on the walls, to drink out of a real glass versus a plastic disposable one. I don't mean to sound aloof or materialistic. Of course I was happy to see my relatives and was really glad to get a few days of time in with my Dad - but Sunday night, as I sipped a mug of tea while standing in my kitchen and surveying the room in the glow of the white Christmas lights I have strung around the window, I realized just how much stuff makes up a home. Yes, the people are important. But so is the well-worn, slightly wobbly green kitchen table, the cat's white food dish on the floor in the corner, the pitcher brought back from Ireland, the one you were desperately afraid wouldn't survive the trip, the red '50s era cake stand sitting atop your dish cabinet, the one that used to belong to your maternal grandmother.

There's a reason why hotels can feel anonymous, why furniture show-rooms look stiff and formal. Each and everyone of us has a different style, displays various treasured items, and decides - even if unconsciously - what sort of "feel" our house will have. If your home is where your heart is it's also a reflection of who you are and what you love. Spending a few nights in a shell of a house, on an air mattress with a slow leak, just happened to remind me of that.