Decorated with Love

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Maybe it was my mom’s disposition, or maybe it was circumstance. I don’t know–but she wasn’t much for fancy furniture or decorative displays around the house.  Air Force officers like my dad had serious national defense responsibilities, but their income didn’t reflect their work, so my parents chose not to go into debt for décor which was intended to elevate their social status like a few of the families we knew. At some point, intent on saving money, my dad reupholstered our seriously aging couch and matching chair all by himself (and no, he had no idea what he was doing, but it was before YouTube, and he knew how to use the library, so he read about it). His favorite colors were red and gold, but he couldn’t find sources for either shade, so he choose salmon colored vinyl instead. Very bright salmon–reminiscent of the spawning grounds I’ve seen in Alaska and the Northwest! His work was meticulous, but I know for a fact that he never asked my mother how she might have felt about that color as the core for their living room design scheme. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t soothing. Or comfortable, for that matter. We kids only recognized Mom’s love of beauty through her insistence that every item which came from her sewing machine fit perfectly and exactly suited the occasion for which it was created. And, of course, there were her oil paintings which hung on our walls wherever we lived—mostly landscapes of places she had visited in our trips across the country when my dad was transferred once again.

As she always had, my mother accommodated. Instead of fancy furniture, she decorated our home with people. ( I laugh when I think of that because many times have I said not-so-jokingly that “if we invite enough people, they’ll hide the dirt and the dust!”) Every lonely airman or new family in base housing was the recipient of a batch of homemade bread or cookies or pie or cake. My mom wasn’t particularly outgoing, but she was constitutionally unable to let someone leave our house without something yummy from her kitchen. And usually they didn’t depart till midnight after playing cards or board games for several hours. There was always a stray neighbor’s kid or two at the dinner table.

Years ago, Daughter #1 and Son #3 spent a semester in Israel at the BYU extension program in Jerusalem. They only could afford one long distance phone call home, but I remember laughing when they told me they were the Voorhies clan diaspora—a term I’d never heard of but which they had learned as part of their curriculum in Hebrew history: people who have spread or been dispersed from their homeland. Only last week—thirty years later—Son #1 and I were discussing our ongoing family version of a diaspora. I doubt my mother knew that she was fostering a tradition which had its root thousands of years ago.

Son #1 is currently housing his mother-in-law and his disabled brother-in law, both of whom are elderly and need the assistance his family can bring. Only recently his “bonus daughter,” who has lived with them for many years, married and moved out. Son #4 has had his single brother-in-law living with him for the last two years, and his in-law just found an apartment closer to his work in the last couple of months. Before that, his wife’s sister and her two children lived with them for more than 10 years—very amicably, I might add. Daughter #2 and family share a home with her husband’s sister, and  just a few months ago her mother-in-law permanently relocated to their house.

Daughter #1 and I were trying to figure out how many people have lived with us for at least several months at a time over the past years. We came up with a partial list: a young woman whose family moved out of state and wanted to stay to finish her education; my niece who was in college at the U while her dad stationed in Germany; Son #6’s closest friend who needed place to live after his mission; another niece with husband and four kids whose home was flooded and stayed here for quite a while until her husband was transferred to Virginia; a fifteen-year-old neighbor who moved in, graduated from high school, went on a mission, and then was married 10 years later in our living room; Son #4’s family (including his sister-in-law and two children) while their house was being renovated; Daughter #2’s family with four kids + her sister-in-law + my sister-in-law (just off a service mission and not yet certain where she wanted to settle permanently) all at once!; Son #6 and his family with 4 kids; my brother; two adult grandchildren; three dogs (not-all-at-once, thank heaven!), and one very cranky cat.

Lest you think we are some kind of saints, remember I’m old, and I have a very long history! I know all this upheaval is not the cup of tea lots of people could handle. But then, I’ve never been particularly good at managing an orderly, predictable world. With a bunch of kids, chaos was the underlying routine. Plus, there’s the love. I love all those people, just as my mom did the folks who rotated in and out of her door. (Except the cranky cat—him not so much.) I don’t know about other folks, but filling a home with love is about as beautiful a décor as any designer could hope for.