Month: July 2013

READING CORNER – A MUST IN EVERY HOME

I can’t think of anything I enjoy more than to sit down with a good book and get completely lost in the characters.  Once after reading a really good book, I confessed to a friend that I was mourning the characters and wondering if I would meet them again.  My friend stopped, touched my arm and in a voice full of concern said to me “but they are not real!”  My friend is also a brilliant scientist with many degrees and she’s never read a fiction book, her nose is always buried in science journals.  I said to her “you must pick up a fiction book and let yourself get taken away.”   On the home front I have books all over the house, I love the look and smell of books.  Both my husband and I read as much as we can, proving difficult sometimes when we are running here and there.  I always bring a book to my children’s hockey practice and sit in a cold rink and read for an hour.  My youngest son told me that I wasn’t a hockey mom, I was a bookworm mom- like it’s a bad thing.  My oldest son reads all the time and it’s never been a problem peaking his interest at the library. It’s a little more work to peak my youngest son’s interest – sports,  more sports and he’s not interested in sitting for any length of time to read.   However, when he discovered “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” he would sit down with the book and not move until he read it from front to back.  To accommodate family reading,  I created two reading corners in the house.  Not having a lot of money to buy fancy things I put it all together from thrift stores, Ikea, a moving sale and I even found a floor lamp in my neighbour’s garbage.  I have a little pride so I sent my son across the street to get it – nothing wrong with it and free works for me.  Both reading corners cost me $140.99  – if you count the .99 cent Pier import pillow I picked up from the Salvation Army still showing the original price tag of $44.95.  I hope these pictures inspire you to create your own corner, everyone needs their own space to sit and dive into ancient worlds, romantic worlds, detective worlds, world of vampires and werewolves or a wimpy kid’s world.

reading corner

The two brown chairs cost me $15.00 each, the little table in-between I found in my garage, the two little coffee tables were $5.00 each at Ikea.  The word “Love” is written in many different languages on the tables – can’t argue with that.  I adore the added touch of Elvis on my $5.00 table – makes it priceless.   The Chaise Lounge in the living room cost me $100.00.  I bought it from my friend’s sister who is downsizing.   I’ve always wanted a chaise lounge but did not want to fork out the money.  The real meaning of thrifting is patience.  The flowered pillow shown on the chaise lounge is a thrifted .99 cent Pier One Import pillow.    The Sweet Peas are free from my garden.  The real value of my $140.99 is shown in the last picture – my youngest son sitting in the chaise lounge reading.  He’s usually allergic to reading but he loves that corner!

lemonade out of lemons

benchI had an old bench sitting in the back yard that I bought a few years ago.  I bought it off some guy on the side of the highway at a country garage sale.  He made the benches out of salvaged wood that he took from torn down cabins.  He really did a beautiful job and I loved the bench.  I left it out in the elements too long and the bench fell apart.  Last week I decided to take it apart and paint it all yellow and put it back together.  Now if you’re thinking smart and crafty girl – think again.  I took it apart quite easily, it literally fell apart as my son and I moved it from the back yard to the front yard.  Painting it was no problem once I tore it apart, putting it back together was another story.  This is where my husband comes in, he was only too happy to take on the job( if you detect sarcasm you are absolutely correct).  My lovely husband put it all back together for me and I have it sitting under the canopy of a beautiful Red Chinese Maple tree amongst the backdrop of glistening yellow Black Eyed Susan flowers and I must say it looks stunning.  However, if you come by my house and the yellow bench under the red canopy intrigues you to sit and ponder, I guarantee you will end up on your ass as the bench got a little too weathered while exposed to the elements and most likely will come apart very easily.  My husband has more talent than he likes to let on.

WRITING ON THE WALL

pink heart

Sitting below the stairs in that grey, cold, inhabitable space, Charlotte recalled the sense of peace and calmness the cramped and lifeless space brought to her so many years ago.  It all started when Charlotte was seven years old and out of nowhere the eruption would happen.  Her parents would be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs and Charlotte couldn’t decide which behavioural method of her parents she preferred; the yelling and screaming or the quiet as a mouse nonsense that seemed to go on for days disrupting the whole house and always left Charlotte feeling bad about herself.

On this day, her parents were yelling and screaming and Charlotte found herself at the back door.  She opened the door and slipped out into the beautiful sunlight as if she was entering another dimension.  Slowly she walked down the pathway, paying attention to every stepping stone she stepped on, careful to make sure her whole foot fit into each stone and every step was taken with a painstaking effort to ensure that she never stepped on the cracks, surely this would “break her mother’s back.”  She found herself around the side of the house staring at her feet as she stepped on each stepping stone when suddenly she heard “are you alright sweetie?”  Charlotte looked up to see her sweet neighbour, Mr. Brown, looking over the fence at her with such concern in his face.

Charlotte instantly felt grateful as she was sure he could hear the yelling and screaming coming out of the open windows of the house.  Thankfully she was standing at the garage side of the house where there were no windows and the yelling and screaming sounded as if the fight was coming from a far off location.   She gave Mr. Brown the biggest smile she could, looked at him straight in the eyes and as confident as a seven-year old could be, she said; “thank you for asking Mr. Brown, everything is good and will get better soon.”  “If you ever want to talk sweetie you just say so.”  Off she skipped away like she hadn’t a care in the world, all the while feeling the stare of Mr. Brown on her back and even though she was not looking at him, she knew he was shaking his head in disgust.  Her parents were always fighting and it was obvious he knew all about it and he was concerned for his little neighbour.  Charlotte would never in a million years betray her parents but she appreciated Mr. Brown’s concern and his gesture gave the situation some lightness.  At least he cared, her parents had no idea where she was and at this moment they didn’t care; they were consumed by anger and jealousy.

Down to the end of the house, across the driveway and up the walkway she found herself at the front door of the house.  What she was doing there she had no idea, the last place she wanted to be was inside that house.  In the moment she was standing there she saw her father near the front window and in a panic she ran up the steps and under the stairway where she sat amongst stones, spiders, ants and dust.  Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to remember when her parents weren’t fighting.  If they weren’t fighting then they weren’t talking to each other, she couldn’t remember if they were ever happy, did they ever smile?  Not really, they never smiled, both of them seemed miserable.  Sitting underneath the stairs Charlotte tried to think of happy thoughts and smile.  It was tough to do because in order for her to have happy thoughts she had to block out all the yelling and screaming.

Charlotte’s desire to be happy was far stronger than her desire to listen to her parents stupid fights.  She would close her eyes and think about the time her daddy took her to a farm in the country and let her ride a horse.  That day her dad had the biggest smile she had ever seen.  She grabbed hold of those reigns and kicked that horse to get him going like she was an old pro, problem was she had no idea what she was doing and that old horse took off with her on it.  She fell off that horse and Charlotte’s anger gave away to all caution when she walked straight up to that old horse grabbed those reigns and got right back on as if nothing happened.  When she glanced over at her father he was smiling from ear to ear.  In the car on the way home, her father told her he was so proud of her for being so strong and confident.

She never forgot that moment  and now siting under the stairs she tried to be so strong and confident.  Charlotte imagined herself riding a beautiful black horse, with a white diamond fluff of fur on the top of his head, up and down the beach staring at the ocean and feeling like she could hear God talking to her in the roar of the waves.  She imagined God was telling her “Charlotte, everything is going to be alright, just keep listening to the universe.”  Charlotte opened her eyes and there in front of her by her feet was a stick of pink chalk.  She must have missed it when she first crawled underneath the stairs.  Charlotte picked up the pink chalk and drew a giant heart in the slanted concrete where on the other side the staircase came down to the walkway that opened up to the driveway.  In the middle of the heart she wrote “Charlotte and love”, she then went over the top of those two words with the pink chalk over and over again.

Thirty years later Charlotte was driving down that old street with her husband and children.  Charlotte asked Steve to stop the car and she found herself standing at the front door in front of that staircase.  In the background she could hear Steve and the children yelling out the car window; “Charlotte, mom, what are you doing?”  Charlotte had learned many moons ago to block out noise she did not want to hear.

As if in a trance, she walked toward the side of that staircase and pushed her way past the overgrown bushes, that were  just little twigs thirty years earlier, ducked her head underneath that staircase and sat with her legs crossed as if she was seven years old again.  Staring at the slanted piece of concrete she could see the faint pink chalk writing shaped like a heart and in the centre she could make out “Charlotte and Love.”   Closing her eyes she pictured herself on that beautiful black horse with the white diamond fluff of fur on the top of his head riding down the beach and she took a deep breath to smell the salted air feeling the mist of the sea dripping down her forehead, arms and legs.  Charlotte’s Mother and father were long dead and sitting under that staircase looking at her chalked heart, “Charlotte and love” she had written so many years ago, she realized the survivor tactics she taught herself so long ago had many times saved her from herself over the years.

Opening her eyes she could hear Steve’s footsteps, sensing the motion of Steve pushing away the overgrown shrubs, she waited for him to look in and find her in that grey, cold inhabitable space.  “Should I ask what it is that you are doing and why you are sitting under this staircase with your legs crossed as if you are practicing Yoga moves?”  Charlotte made a move toward Steve and gave him a big kiss on the lips and said “no honey, just know that I love you and the children more than anything on this earth and that love sprouted from this grey, cold inhabitable space many years ago.”

Johanne Fraser