The summer cottage is vacuumed, aired out, and ready to receive me. De-cluttering still needs to be exercised, there, as well as in the house. Creativity for me, needs an organized, quiet, somewhat clean realm. My children are now rolling their eyes. Being clean and organized is not easy with four large rescue dogs, on a farm, with a loving spouse who grew up with maids and secretaries. Progress, due in part with the advent of more time on my part, no commute time, is being made.
My parents are lately involved in this transition from working stiff, to self-employed. They seep into my head more often than in the past. Perhaps they were always there? With fewer outside distractions, could it be I hear them better, or perhaps I am a better listener now?
My motto, “Onward and Upward” came from my mother. Clean floors and washed windows make a house look cleaner, came from my mother. One by one the windows are letting the sun shine in, minus the spider webs. Floors are being swept, vacuumed and mopped, just in time for mud season. Four large rescue dogs remember?
And then, there is the sofa. Many, many years ago my mother commissioned a Swedish design sofa. Her father was a Swedish furniture maker. With simple wood trim, ivory down cushions it was/is comfort personified. Every night my father would come home from work and take a cat nap on said sofa. The family admired the Christmas tree and enjoyed the fire on said sofa. I could not bear to part with it. We hoisted it up, with great difficulty, through a second story window when my widowed mother moved into an apartment on Comm Ave in Boston. My son slept there for a time when he lived with her.
The sofa has a soul, and it is interwoven into the fabric of our family. Now, it is time, however, for it’s tattered self to leave this world. Fear not, the down cushions will be re purposed. There is only so much cathartic-ism one can muster. A huge, really HUGE, step on my part. But, it is time. My parents are in my brain, my being, my soul. I do not need a once beautiful, custom made, down sofa to remind me of them. I hope. Onward and Upward.
Self Employed Again 