In the New House....

“In the new house….”  These are the four words I mutter to the dog, as he pants away, looking for droppings from the dining table.   “What’s that?”  My son asks.  “Four words…in the new house….”  From this I mean, things will be different for the  dog who has taken his breed name seriously (King Charles Spaniel). While I admit to killing any chance I had at training him, by constantly referring to him as the cutest dog in the world, I still feel the need to pull back and tell him, “Things will be different” in the new house.

How?  The dog inquires, head tilted to one side. How? The son inquires, head tilted to one side. I mull this over, while chewing on dinner, recalling a poem by Mary Oliver– How Would You Live Then?

“What if the bees filled your walls with honey and all

you needed to do was ask them and they would fill

the bowl?

What if, the poet asks over and again. Just as I am doing so now.

“In the new house…” there will be no teenage clutter, the drum set will be long sold off Craigslist.  The husband will clean his desk, or the desk will be out sight at night, so as not to interrupt my feng shui.  The dog will not have a sight line to the outdoors, without of course jumping on a bench seat, which in the new house he won’t be allowed to. In the old house, he recently seceded from the union and took up residence on the mudroom seat bench, where yesterday, I had set down an older flat screen TV, and the dog proceeded to nest there.

I walk aimlessly through boxes of my parents’ belongings, following the passing of my father, and swear I will not accumulate to the level at which he and Mom did so. I will set out looking for a new world order. But I recognize it is not even the orderly nature of things that I am searching for. But a new way of living.  TVs will be hidden or up on the third floor. The kids will have to climb two sets of narrow, steep steps to watch HBO. In the new house, there will be no yellow plastic University of Oregon cups that pass as stemware.

The dining table will pull double duty as the kitchen table.  And the main floor will be real living space, not living rooms, but spaces to converse, gaze out a window, listen for the noises of the street.  There is no “away” room as well-known author and architect Sarah Susanka proposes, a place for quiet. With the exception of the click-clack of the keyboard, the entire house will be quiet without any kids until holidays or breaks.

I am thankful for the time which has forced me to consider how will I use a kitchen when there are only two people and not six. How much space does one need to write? How big a desk?  Shouldn’t the focus be more on size of the imagination than the size of the desk?

Furniture. Pictures. “What is valuable, what does valuable mean?  What to keep, what to put in storage, what to give away?   I previously asked movers who helped with mom and dad’s possessions “Aren’t we better off as a throwaway society?” Not in the terms of taking over landfills, or refusing to recycle, but in our ability to not hold on to the past so dearly lest that grip sap our energy stores.

Reviewing built-ins for the home, I have been vacillating on how much storage is necessary. Storage = accumulation = baggage and plenty of it. When my father bragged about 19 closets in the home he and Mom designed, I groaned. It was 19 closets that also had to be cleared. I look forward to clean spaces.  Less stuff, more life.

What if we gave of ourselves and not worried about what we left behind?  What if what matters is how well we loved, not how well we lived? How would we live then?

As for the dog, I suspect he will still have the run of the place. His antics bring a smile to all the faces in the family, an action worthy of preserving.