To What Use…

Follow me, and I’ll show you to what good use… these wares can be put.

Spirit of Christmas Present (Edward Woodward), to Scrooge (George C. Scott) in the market, from the telecast of A Christmas Carol (1984)

Dearest Rachel –

You’ll probably remember that, when we were looking to move out of the condominium and actually buy a house, we were looking for one that had more room to it than we truly needed for ourselves. I don’t believe it was your idea alone, although it was because of your friend Ellen that we originally purposed to do so. We were concerned about her safety in the apartment complex she called home at the time, and wanted to do better by her (and, less altruistically, we wanted her nearby, both for the sake of having her close as a friend and as a babysitter). So we would find ourselves looking for a place with extra room – possibly incorporating a separate entrance, for privacy and independence’s sake – so that she could live with us, if she so chose, or at least stay over when she would visit.

To that end, she even accompanied us on some of our househunting ventures, although she never committed to our ideal of moving in with us (and we discovered there were, in fact, very few homes with that manner of separate space in the local area – certainly few that were in our price range at the time. Ironically, we could probably do considerably better these days, both in terms of our purchasing power and available housing, but in the intervening years, she moved to a much safer complex, bought a condominium of her own, and the issue was rendered moot). But regardless, we wound up with a house that was, by most standards, decidedly larger than necessary for a family of three. Aside from the master suite, there were three smaller rooms upstairs that could serve as living quarters for a child or a guest. We even painted the one room yellow specifically for Ellen, as she favored the color.

And for a time, we were able to use the various rooms as they were intended. To be sure, we converted one of the upstairs rooms into an office almost from the very start (and prior to that, the husband of the couple we bought the place had been using it as a weight room, so it hadn’t served as actual living space for some time already), but we managed to use the yellow room as guest quarters, both for Ellen on occasion and the girls from Southwestern that one summer (while the boys had futons they set up in the already-cluttered basement) now twenty years ago. As for the third room, that was the most used of all; we painted it a royal blue for Daniel to call his own, and he was content with it until middle school or thereabouts. But after having gotten him a loft bed with a desk situated beneath it as he’d wanted, he soon discovered that he’d outgrown it. Not that he was too big for either the bed or the desk, but rather the ceiling; he couldn’t so much as sit up in bed without clocking himself. It was at that point that he moved downstairs to sleep on the couch in the family room, and he’s been there ever since.

So, over the course of the last two decades, these rooms began to become little more than storage areas, and all but inaccessible due to the amount of ground clutter (and I blame myself here, too, as the office in particular grew to be that way because I saved much of my own paperwork just as you did your clothes), which only got worse as we began to move everything of your parents’ stuff that you intended to keep into the yellow room in particular. It seemed as if none of these rooms would ever be used again for their originally intended purpose.

Until now.

I’ve mentioned to you before about how Logan is being asked to move out by his folks and make his way on his own, to which he and Daniel have requested that he be allowed to rent out a room here. Since this house is too big for just the two of us at least most of the time – I’m not sure what to make of those times when Daniel’s listening to this or that, and blows his shofar in… celebration? agreement? I’m not really sure, but I’d prefer to be elsewhere in the house where I can least hear it – I see no problem with that. Especially with the house having been purged of so much of what cluttered it up that the two of us would never use again – I hesitate to call much of it ‘junk’, as you would have considered it valuable, but without you to give it value, I’ve been taught not to hang onto it so tightly – each of these rooms have been freed up for use. Granted, I’m having to give up my ‘man cave’, but considering that our bedroom is more or less on in its own right, I might as well lean into it rather than clinging to every room in the house being ‘my’ territory.

Indeed, Logan seems like he’ll be fairly low-maintenance, moving most of his stuff in on his own (all right, he got some help from his parents – which is a good sign, as they seem to be okay with the arrangement; apparently, they aren’t concerned that I might coddle him to anywhere near the same extent as Daniel) as he got situated last night. The only thing he requested was that I move the rocker/recliner out of the room. And since the black recliner is starting to lose its structural integrity anyway (between developing a sag in the seat and the back leaning so far back that I need a large pillow to prop myself up to sit in it), it’s just as well we should bring the brown one down to replace it.

So things are a little bit different now, both upstairs and down. We’ll see how this goes; I’ll keep you posted.

Until later, honey, keep an eye on for us, and wish us all luck – I’m pretty sure we’ll need it.