 |
| Empty house! |
The subject of home has been much on my mind lately as we
have gone through the tortuous and exhausting process of moving from one house
to another in towns hundreds of miles apart. We are down-sizing (a bit) and
although we have disposed of quite a lot of things one way and another, we
still have a lot of ‘stuff’.
 |
| My father and the cabinet he made for me in 1977 |
However I realised as I stood in our newly empty house,
about to hand over the keys and title to it to someone else, that a lot of what
felt like ‘home’ to me was bound up with this ‘stuff’. Much of this has to do with memory, of books
and furniture and ornaments passed down from parents and grandparents and from
friends, and of pictures and things chosen and made my own. In the new house
these things have yet to find their places and some will no doubt in time find
a new home with other people. It will take a while for me to feel ‘at home’ in
these new surroundings.
But of course home is not just a house with things in it. It
is about the people who live there and visit it as well. I have always found
section 26 of Advices and Queries on the subject of a Quaker home rather
intimidating. ‘Try to make your home a place of loving friendship and
enjoyment, where all who live or visit may find the peace and refreshment of
God’s presence.’ My home has sometimes been
a place of noise and conflict, although always grounded in love and therefore
not without that divine presence that never despairs.
In our new house we will be nearer to two of our three
children and to our grandchildren. This was an important part of our reason for
moving and I hope we can make our home a welcoming place for all of them as
well as for friends both old and new. Above
all I hope that everyone who comes here will find a piece of home for
themselves – if not always peace and quiet!
I'm glad to see some recognition of the importance of 'stuff'. There has been so much emphasis on decluttering recently but there is another side to the coin. Last year my daughter commented after her grandmother's death that she did not know what the items she was clearing from the house had meant, why they had been kept and felt something significant was being lost. I must restart my stalled project to photograph and record the meaning of significant items of my own so she won't have the same problem with my belongings. I mat even decide some are clutter and can go.
ReplyDelete