So, instead, I'm gazing around my "warm" colored room and thinking about Barcelona (read: Barth-elona...if you've ever taken Spanish with Senior Presberg of MU, you know what I'm talking about here). A few weeks back, a day or two after arriving here in Dixieland, a man rang the doorbell at 8am, setting off a chorus of barking (my parents' two dogs as mine were keeping D-bones company in Mizzourah). My tiny mother made her way across the wooden floor to the front door where she pushed the dogs aside, grabbed the biggest dog-the one at least half her weight-by the leash, and opened the door.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was the moment Ray entered my life. That's right: Ray. And not just my life, but my bedroom where I was still mostly asleep. For the next few days, Ray came like clockwork to my bedroom door, but, alas, I had moved to a room that would not be disturbed at 8am by Ray so he could paint the walls a a dark yolk color with just a touch of the finest gold you've ever seen. Because my room will be in "candid" photographs, it will be staged (now that it's been painted and revamped in deep scarlet and gold hues with black accents framing each piece of furniture) for our photographer, for the bridesmaids, for the wedding day.
My mother is an aesthetic genius when it comes to rooms. She looks around and sees an entire scheme, complete with furniture and the tassels that will hang from the lampshades on the two nightstands that don't match in anything but color (this description goes for both the stands and the lamps and their shades). It's ridiculous the things she can do to a room. For example: nothing matches specifically to each other. The fabric that climbs from the floor to the ceiling, well beyond the reach of sun from the windows they cover, is decorated in carefully stitched golden leaves that grow, without pattern, over the red-set curtain backdrop...and these splendid, curtains fit for a God do not exactly match the red bedspread that feels like silk schantung, but simply cannot be! Lest we forget, I'm a mere mortal and we do not sleep on beds of silk schantung. But, though the color is similar to the heavy fabric that keeps the room dark when the sun comes up, the material on the spread is too delicate to imagine. It's the sort of material that "shhushes" beneath your fingers like cascading water from a fountain. It, too, has rich tones of muted gold that are, really, orange against the red backdrop its unassuming plaid design is etched over. I mentioned the unmatching nighstands and their unmatching lamps with their unmatching shades, heights, shapes. The furniture has been painted or bought in stark black with moments of wear at the edges, giving the impression it is older than it is, that it's seen more life than we know. And who am I to criticize? Maybe it has...maybe it has.
Amidst my mother's stunning canvas are signs of her patience: pastel colored Welcome bags huddled together where the floor was once empty, empty boxes I dare not throw out because I might "need" them, countless white-wrapped gifts with strings of gold ribbon whose ends have been tricked into banana curls so they might dangle attractively from the packages. The robust, black armoire has remained flung open, the way I left it weeks ago when I first arrived and began using it to store Wedding goods, separating items by shelf and side. Each time I approach the enormous wooden piece, I imagine the open doors, so far apart from one another, are spread out, awaiting my arrival, as if prepared to embrace me at any moment no matter what I bring to fill the empty drawers with, no matter how full I cram the shelves. The whole room, always waiting, happy to be used, bursting with warmth and celebration.
This is what the last few weeks leading up to the wedding have been like.
Wonderful, busy, rich in warmth and light, oceanic, beautiful and patient. Just a little over a week left!
It's nice to be back. I hope you're still out there reading.
xoxoxo
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