The Living Room

It started with staring at the fireplace. Sitting on the couch with my cup of coffee in the solitude of an empty house, it suddenly dawned on my how central that fireplace is to this room, how so many days and events have passed before it without us even paying attention. That fireplace used to be brown, an ugly, rough, unfinished wood around the stone which my mom worked so hard to sand and paint over. This room is now so beautiful, complete, and well cared for after years of my mom's post-divorce freedom to decorate it's hard to believe how much has happened here. In the place of that picture on the wall there hung for twenty years a very ugly, large, and oddly shaped brown clock, a wedding gift to my parents that I used to imagine was a map of the landscape of the movie Pocahontas. My aunt forced my mom to get rid of it when she came down to help my mom paint and decorate the house, saying it was too hideous to be allowed to stay. Instead of the coffee table we used to have a small, round table that my dad had made, the top of which was very smooth and Julie and I were always getting in trouble for sliding in circles across it. So many people have walked through this room, many of whom I don't remember. This place used to be bustling daily with nurses, cleaning ladies, or just friends come to help their friend with the handicapped son in any way they could. And there, right there, on the floor, is where I rolled around and played with my brother and sister back when I was one of three. There used to be a couch where the tv is there where my mom would sit with Joey while Julie and I played on the floor, her watching and Joey laughing whenever we got in trouble. Just around the corner there is the spot under the kitchen bar where I used to hide when my parents were fighting. I always felt like I was safe there in the corner, with walls on either side of me and the top of the bar close over my head. No one could see me unless they were walking towards me from the back of the house, which didn't happen often. It was a good spot. And there, right in front of me, so close, is where my mom and dad would stand yelling at each other after Julie and I had gone to bed, and just to my left is where I stood in my disney princess nightgown asking them to please keep it down so I could sleep. Fast forward a few years and I'm only a foot away from the spot where my sister stood and yelled those infamous preteen words "I hate you! You're ruining my life!", marking the beginning of years of shouting matches. This room has been the battleground of so many fights. It's hard to see that now, as if all of those old days were painted over with the burgundy paint that now covers one wall. This room here is not a battlefield. This room is beautiful, quiet, too elegant for bombs to explode here. That chair in the middle of the room, with its new upholstery, is now Greg's chair, from which he got up to greet me when I returned the other night. The big squishy green chair in the corner is my mom's chair, where she sits quietly every night, watching tv before she goes to bed. It's too new to have seen most of the fighting. The same with most of this furniture, actually. My dad never let my mom decorate or have nice things, so after he moved out and we had a little extra money my mom did a complete overhaul of the house, replacing everything my dad had picked out with things new and beautiful and painting the walls new colors. And there, in the midst of all the tarp covered furniture and paint cans still stood the fireplace, the silent and steady witness to all our battles and wars and to the new peace that is still settling in.