Staying in the Vanilla Cottage

Last Friday I moved out of my house so Katie and Jeff can have their two week honeymoon there. Some might say it is a sacrifice on my part but I’m seeing it as a great chance to step aside and view my home, even my life, from a distant hill. I’ve rented an apartment here at the retirement community nearby where I was the receptionist back in the late ’80’s. It’s a lovely place with a “campus” full of flowers, orange trees, green lawns and sunshine. I see many advantages to living full time here. There are three buses that take you shopping. Markets and malls on certain days, theaters, symphonies, and to a choice of three churches on Sundays. I wouldn’t need to have a car. Delicious meals are served and you can have them delivered or eat in the dining room. I could name a host of other amenities these people enjoy and I’m thinking I could move here, but right now may not be the time and may never be. The more plausible step for me is to view the place I own from this mental hillside and think of how I can make it better. It’s too crowded, for one thing and Robin is going to help me clear out the things I don’t need when I get home. That will be like moving without the expense or hassle. I think to stay where I am is the better choice right now. And I can keep my little creek!

My daughter, Robin, is a practical girl. She’s in tune to helping both herself and others. And she’s been telling me something of a thing called “feng shui.” All I know, so far, is that it makes one’s environment open and inviting and peaceful. For instance, not arranging furniture in such a way that it blocks the path or the view. I’m the kind that can take a simple idea like that and use it to meet my need without studying the whole book. My home needs to be pared down, uncluttered, simplified. I’m thinking of ways to make it so.

I call this place where I’m staying the “Vanilla Cottage.” I call it that because it is so simple, so clean, so utterly comfortable, so thoughtfully arranged but yet, well, can I say tastefully ordinary?  Maybe that’s an oxymoron. A perfect guest house. It’s the kind of place that could not be nicer for a “hillside” view of life, but well, it’s just not home. Still, I can visualize it as home if I could move my own furnishings in, or even trade those for a shopping spree decor. My Pennsylvania House solid oak furniture has been hauled to seven new places over the 30+ years since we bought it. Still looks good. It probably always will if it’s cared for, but it’s getting old to me. I’d like something lighter, brighter, but that is not practical on my budget. And it would not have familiar memories. So, I’ll lighten up in other ways. 

Lightening up mentally is a must at any age and that’s getting to be a harder task. Not that I feel down much of the time. I just sense that I need to give my mental household some feng shui too. Clear out of mind the things I don’t need, things that are not useful anymore, things that get in the way of my footsteps and views. I need to do a better job of sticking to my theme about older is better when more and more it would seem otherwise. If I were another kind of writer I could go into my personal problems and health issues and bring them into 3D, but that’s not me. It’s not that I wish to hide from these, pretend things are better than they are, but I guess I’m of the mind that health and personal problems should be addressed with the least advertisement possible. In fact, when I was growing up it was considered bad manners to unload on others. People didn’t talk about their problems much, or if they did it would be in a lighter vein, something to laugh about. “How are you?” “I’m fine, thank you, except for the weather. Darn near froze my eye-balls yesterday!” Gossiping was considered a sin, at least in my family. By those standards today’s world, especially television, would be ever so different!

All I really wanted to say today is that I’m away from home, comfortably settled, sticking to a somewhat solitary life. It’s unusual to be alone with oneself. Good too, because it’s by choice. I hope the young newlyweds are enjoying my place. It’s been Katie’s home for some time so it should be a great start in playing house, in married life, to them.This “Vanilla Cottage” I'm in will be my home for another ten days and nights. I should be able to say when I go home to my creekside condo-cottage that I’m a better person. Vacations should do that for us, shouldn’t they?