When our children left home, we moved from a big house to a smaller apartment. I finally had an excuse to buy a new set of pots and pans. I'd been using my mother's kitchenware while my children were growing up, and her pots were made in the days before Teflon.
With the children gone, I didn't cook the same kind of hearty meals I used to. But I wanted modern, easy-to-clean cooking pots for so long they were the first purchases I made for our new place. We divided our furniture among our children, keeping a few pieces that were particularly precious to us. The new and the old blended together nicely and our rooms are more interesting with different styles of furniture in them. My daughter accompanied me on a shopping spree for our new place and we had a splendid time even as we both sighed with exhaustion. As she told everyone at the time, "We shopped 'til we dropped."
By giving our old furniture to our children we received a special benefit. Now when we visit the children we feel right at home because we're surrounded by our old, comfy, well-worn sofas, chairs, tables and chests. My son and his daughter are taking piano lessons on the old upright he had lessons on when he was a child.
Furnishing our new apartment back then was expensive and exhausting. But painful memories do fade over time--or else, as my mother used to say, no woman would have a second baby. That's why I was ready to do it all over again, furnish a new vacation home that we recently purchased as a hideaway from stress.
Our new home is so tiny, I thought, furnishing it would be a cinch. No way. This little place is taking as much time and energy to pull together as our larger home did. And this time I'm doing the shopping with my long-suffering husband at the wheel. It's not nearly as much fun as it was when my daughter was with me.
As much as they love you, husbands only go shopping because they have no escape hatch. What I've told my darling is that television sets and DVD players are male toys. They're his bailiwick. I just go along for the ride because our little hideaway is 60 miles from the nearest good shopping. Once there, he can find the interesting stuff he wants and so can I.
Furniture stores are especially nice places for husbands because they can sit on comfortable chairs while waiting for their energetic wives to get too exhausted to buy more stuff.
We purposely chose our vacation abode to get away from the fast lane. What we found were some surprises. We can't get a DSL computer connection because our county doesn't have enough people in it. We did get our telephone line connected after 10 days of patient waiting. The locals are very laidback and helpful, but in a small town there is very little privacy. The local paper comes out once a week and is filled mostly with gossip and what's happening around town, nary a word about war and corporate crime.
This is a pleasant change. I was wondering how our 9- and 11-year-old grandsons will take to our little hideaway when they spend summer vacation with us. But I found my worries were unnecessary. The builder of our little place has volunteered to "hire" both boys to help work on his other projects, building little homes for more people like us.
There goes isolation and here comes a DSL connector and, gossip has it, a Super Wal-Mart.
Contact Barbara Bova at Babova@naplesnews.com
