I was wandering around Kudzu the other day. My favorite neighborhood vintage, antiques, collectibles, artwork, industrial, and so forth kind of place. I went for a much needed mental health break.
Bill was home with the dogs. (The new kid still needs quite a bit of supervision.) It was too cold and damp for a walk outside, at least for someone with vivid memories of chronic pain.
Kudzu is perfect. Heat, but not too much. Sirius 60’s on Six radio. (Yes, I sing along!) A few slopes and ramps in the floor but no potholes. Or traffic. And enough eye candy to forget that I’m actually exercising. I try to go twice around, faster, rather than once, slowly.
If you discount, for the moment, the trendy decorators and movie set designers, the majority of the shoppers are people like me. Local. Somewhere between nostalgic and out of the box. Environmentally concerned. Not fans of matching. I often wind up chatting with new friends.
On this particular trip, a woman asked if she might ask me a question.
Neverminding the old joke about, “You just did,” I said that she might, indeed.
(This happens to me a lot. Farmers’ Market. The paint department at my favorite Ace Hardware. Or Lowe’s. PineStreet Market. Intown Quilters.)
Bill thinks I have one of those old hobo signs that translates into ask this woman!
In any event, her question was, “What would you call your decorating style?”
It’s a good question. One I’ve been trying to answer for a few years now myself.
First of all, it changes a lot. At least the expression of it changes. Needs change. We move furniture. We re-designate the funtions of rooms. I need new colors.
If you visited just now, you might assume that my style was something pretty close to early Kennel Club. Or campy dog furniture showroom!
Or, contemporary quilt store.
Or, library wanna-be.
Or, folk art fanatic.
Not too long ago, I hatched up a label that works for me.
Eclectic Urban Nest.
That’s me!
Quilts and books and folk art angels. Dog beds, for sure. (And dog hair!)
Furniture I’ve built. (And some I’ve un-built!) Heirloom furniture. Vintage stuff. Rustic stuff. And an old stainless back table from the operating room at a local hospital!
Colors. Lots of them.
Light. As much as possible.
And wall outlets. More than the guy who built my house in 1962 ever imagined!
Someplace handy for a Sunflower yellow Fiestaware mug of hot water with lemon.
An improbable combination of memory, function, and hope.
Hope for a future unfolding even now.
Breathing. Snoring. WholeTones music. Aromatherapy.
(The new kid is still a bit anxious.)
Comfort in service of the future. Hope.
And room for my family.
Just like a nest.
There is a nest, by the way, in the fountain on the front porch. There was one a couple of years ago, too.
We’ll go around, again. And resist the urge to peek, trying hard not to disturb the mama, while praying that the babies are not too early given the wild swings in weather.
Nesting is an odd combination of comfort and risk. Of faith in the future despite the immediate experience of vulnerability.
Of flight, as it were, to a new land. Hoping against hope that someone has swept a heap of dog hair and a few scraps of yarn and a bit of cotton quilt batting out the door in a gesture of welcome, rather than a mundane task to be forgotten as soon as it’s complete.
Perhaps we are called to be an eclectic urban nest for the world. In any event, I’ll be back at Kudzu soon, eager to find out what the next question might be.
