Christmas Week on Widowhood Lane

I’ve had plenty of time to talk to myself the past four days and those conversations are not worth repeating unless you care about area rugs, sleeper chairs and why the heck you can’t buy anything these days that doesn’t need to be assembled! Then there’s the question I’ve been asking myself: Can I actually wrestle around all the parts to a hundred pound sleeper chair long enough to screw them all together? I’m not the strongest old person on the block. Actually, I’m the only person on a block over forty so it could be said that I'm both the strongest and the weakness old person on the cul-de-sac. I need to find a Rent-a-Husband or a Rent-a-Handyman. Seriously, it’s long overdue that I find a professional service that can do things like assemble chairs, install new doorbells, change the light bulb in my overhead garage door opener and other things that involve ladders, electricity and muscles. I did buy myself a power drill for Christmas, though, and I used it to install a new cabinet lock on an oak showcase. I’m not completely helpless.

After the holidays I’m making over my former spare bedroom into a space where I can start painting again. With the full size bed gone---I gave it away---I’ve been trying out different ideas in my head---iron daybeds, futon chaise lounges, air mattresses, convertible footstool/beds---for that one or two nights a year when I might actually need a guest room. I found a small chair (30”x35”x30”) that turns into a 30”x72” bed when needed. The color choices are limited to gray and beige and since I hate the latter, gray is what I’m ordering. If I can’t assemble the sleeper chair on my own, then I’ll bite the bullet and go on online to fine a handyman who advertises, “No job too small!” The floor in the room is light colored wood so I’m getting an area rug to “ground” what little furniture will reside in there with the chair. I’ll just throw a bed sheet down on the floor around my easel when I paint to keep the room from going full-out art studio messy. 

My biggest challenge doing the room makeover, though, is what to do with my childhood dollhouse that sits on a small desk in the room. I want to use that desk for the purpose it was intended again. It’s one of the first antiques I ever bought and I love it as much now as I did back in ‘60s. I can’t even lift the dollhouse so even when I find another place to put it, I’m going to need help. It’s vintage, designed after Tara in Gone with Wind and it was built from plans printed in a magazine back before WWII. As a little girl, I spent hours playing with the house but I spend even more time in the ‘70s redecorating ‘Tara.’ I built furniture from kits, wallpapered, painted, made curtains, and bedding. My mom crocheted little rugs and I still have a kit to wire the house with electricity. I met my husband during my dollhouse era which explains why the wiring never got finished and the front door still hasn’t been rehung. I wish I knew a little girl who’d like it. We have one girl in the family under a year old and two more in wombs, so maybe one day I will know a little girl who will want to play with miniatures---if I don’t sell the house first. 

Four days without human contact and already I’m tired of talking to myself. I would have made a lousy prairie pioneer who often went months without seeing or hearing from another human being. I should call someone but it’s so close to Christmas I don’t want to interrupt their busy schedules. In Angels & Demons Dan Brown wrote, “Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.” I didn’t read the book but I understand the quote. We read Facebook postings by our friends and families going off to one place or another, and between the holidays TV is full of feel-good stories about good people doing good deeds and it’s all---well---very good. But if we let it, watching the rest of the world go by without us can bring out the grumpy ghost of holidays past. Widows can feel like lead soldiers sitting high on a shelf because the latest version of Star Wars toys has taken over the world.

The son-I-wish-I-had has recently become the guardian over an elderly woman who has spent the seven-eight years since her husband died being a hermit, living in a classic hoarder’s house. Apparently she wasn’t a nice lady living alone. Neighbors would try to help and be rebuffed. Once a guy shoveled the snow off her sidewalk and was told to get off her property, offers of baked goods from neighbors were refused and any dog ball or kid toy that landed on her lawn ended up in a box inside her house. I vow to all that is holy in the blog world that I will not become that lady! At times I might be an island onto myself but it’s going to be a nice, welcoming island where the only inhabitant will resist turning her inner William Blake loose on the plastered wall. ©

"Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life." 

William Blake

William Blake, an artist and poet who was often labeled insane, genius and prophet all rolled into one.