The Office

I used to write in the room that used to be the living room.

On the day his house became our house, My Beloved argued there was no reason to unpack my ten year-old Gateway when he had a perfectly good, practically newborn HP in the living room. The computer sat on an iron and formica contraption that had surely been salvaged from an office whose inhabitants had eventually developed a sense of taste in furniture.

The walls were eggshell.  I know this because I made the mistake of calling them “white”.  And color was not the only thing of which these walls were devoid.  On the ten walls separating the living/dining room from the rest of the house, there was but one attempt at décor.  I didn’t know the artist, and there was something about the depiction of sweltering slaves in cotton fields that felt inappropriate in a room where people were expected to eat food.  To my credit, I didn’t snatch the print down immediately, but waited instead until I had another rectangular object to put in its place.  Nothing was ever said…

Within months, the walls were russet.  My great grandmother’s quilt dressed up one side of the room.  Depictions of family in various stages of development filled another.  The computer was a Dell, dude, and sat upon a massive desk carved from hardwoods and stained a luscious cherry.  Across from the desk, a bank of windows looked out upon a suburban cul-de-sac where children might be playing, dogs could be walking, trees changed color, and the occasional student driver eased around the circle testing the patience of those on carefully curbed bicycles.  More than once, this vista provided inspiration. 

Often, though, the view was skewed by someone passing through. 

“Mom?  Could you explain the theory of relativity and how it relates to your everyday life?”

Okay, he never actually asked that question, but he may as well have.  The first syllable broke my concentration.  And, as he posed his question or told his story or vented about a perceived slight, I fought to keep my eyes on his face while my mind wrote sentences I wouldn’t allow my fingers to type. 

It was after one particularly inquisitive afternoon that I arrived upon the idea of turning a bedroom into an office, a place with a door, a door that could be closed. 

Last week, I moved in.  The Navajo blanket that had adorned a wall in the living room of my “Cool Single Mom” duplex lived to hang another day.  My desk is small, but large enough to accommodate the pencil canister Shane made in first grade and my favorite pewter candlestick.  My antique tables are doilied.  Incense burns incessantly.  Drawings drawn by a favorite artist fill a wall warmed by twinkle lights. 

And the pressure is on…

The act of carving a niche for my writing makes it more important, somehow.  Now that an entire room of my house has been set aside for the act, it seems I should be doing it not just more often, but more effectively. 

But, I’m not.

I’m not writing.  I’m working, and shopping, and baking, and wrapping, and partying, and marveling at my creation.  I created a room, and it’s a great room, a room my family has dubbed “The Zen Room”.  But sitting inside it I realize that the room, as zen as it is, is but a symbol of another, more important, creation. 

I’ve created a home.  I’ve created a family.  I’ve created a relationship in which my partner allows me to dance to the music I hear even when he can’t hear it. 

No walls were built and the boundaries, such as they are, drew themselves. 

2010 will be remembered as the year I finally found the wisdom to shed that which is unnecessary, and in the process found me. 

One day I hope to write about it.  I have the room...

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