The Dining Room

Several years ago, I returned to my parent's home, my childhood home, with my husband and my two children.  My father had recently passed away and my mother had put the house on the market. A decision was quickly made to sell our home, a 1936 Gambrel Colonial, and purchase my mother's home.  She was moving to a lovely in-law apartment with my younger sister and her family.  Our three bedroom, one and a half bath Colonial sold quickly, finding ourselves moving into our 1917 Colonial in November and soon celebrating our "first" Christmas with my entire family in my parent's home -- my home.

 

 

As much of the home was floor to ceiling paneling, the dining room not spared, we made the decision to paint it all.  The decision was made more from an emotional perspective rather than a practical one.  We needed to settle in as quickly as possible as our world was keenly out of balance. We were adrift, floundering, and needing the comfort of home.  My only hope at the time was to make my well-loved childhood home, my children's home as well.   

Four and a half years later, the dining room's color remains the same.  The accessories and draperies have changed, will change again, I am certain.  But I still love the paint over paneling, a subtle reminder of my mother and father and our family dinners. So vivid is the memory of my father's stereo exploding with the bells and cannonading of the 1812 Overture and my sisters and I giggling, overcome with silliness, as my mother loudly tells him to turn it down.

This memory-keeper, this lodestar, this sanctuary -- this home.