Coming Home

Holt Florida
Just outside of Pensacola

There is something about dirt and sticks and mortar and permanence that makes the heart beat faster. Even if you’ve never set foot in a place, if that place is your own, it can engender such tender feelings, such commitment, such incredible loyalty as to defy ordinary reason.

Such are the feelings I am dealing with, a mere five hours away from my new house in Palm Coast, Florida.

Never mind that I have spent the last four days on line, researching fire pits, chairs, curtains, bed frames and bookcases. Never mind that in my mind I have entirely rearranged four rooms in this house that I have lived in for all of one and a half weeks. It is mine, mine, mine, and I can’t wait to get there and make it my own.

Despite the face that some rooms remain empty, I will change two of the rooms I have already decorated. I will depend on Craig’s list to get rid of the old memories in favor of the new memories I hope to create. I’ll sell the hutch and buy a marble top for the buffet. It’s cooler, and more modern. I’ll move the guest room to another location, so that I can put in a lovely bureau, all the better to feel comfortable and welcome when you visit. I’ll even move the entire dining room, the one room that has a full complement of furniture, to the living room, sell the table and spend money on a glass-topped table that will be a showpiece for all who enter the front door.

Flexibility is the word, and change is the option I embrace with enthusiasm. My family room will be modern, oh joy, with one solidly antique chair to defy the convention that modern means cool, spare and mostly, uncomfortable.

I will spend whatever it takes to put in that punch of yellow, that statement of my individuality. A color I have never ever used, but it will probably end up looking like all the rooms I have ever decorated, I’m afraid. We are who we are, after all.

But meanwhile, this is so exciting. Sitting in a bus I will not live in for at least three months, the longest stretch in over three years. Anticipating that I have all the money in the world, and all the options in creation, to create the dream home of my future. Except that now is my future, and the reality is, it had better be functional and comfortable, or my husband will put the kibosh on my grand schemes, at the risk of his taking up residence in the bus in storage.

But nobody, yes nobody can rain on my parade. Hey Mr. Arnstein, I’m almost home.