(Image is of a tall, empty, caramel-colored wooden shelving unit, with a curved quarter-round set of matching shelves attached to the right side)
My little house is becoming more and more empty, as I move things into storage and give things away. Yesterday I watched a tall, beautiful shelf that I’d had for years go out the door, bound for a new home.
When I met Randy, my ex-husband, the ink was still drying on his divorce from his second wife. He and Amanda were still friendly and co-habitating while she bought a place in another state. The house they lived in had been their baby: they bought a humble little one-story cottage with an unfinished basement and over the course of their 7-year marriage, turned it into 3000 square feet of livable space. They finished the basement, giving it three bedrooms, a family room, and a full bath/laundry. They left the main floor mostly alone, two bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. They took off the roof and added another floor, with cathedral ceilings and a huge palladium window, dividing that 1000 square feet into two rooms and a giant bathroom. When it was finished, their marriage was as well.
He brought me there on our first or second date, and I was overwhelmed but also in awe (and a little fear). It was the biggest house I had ever been in, but somehow it felt small. The living room was full of big, dark, looming gothic antiques, like a parlor out of an old horror movie. Heavy burgundy drapes with valances and thick silk cord tie-backs covered the picture window, adding to the dark overbearing vibe. A tufted, stiff-looking high-back burgundy velvet couch, ebony, with a matching settee and coffee table took up most of the space. Despite every single wall being white, the effect was oppressive, gloomy, and a bit scary.
“Wow,” I said, trying to sound impressed. “This is quite the furniture collection you have here.”
“Oh, that’s all Amanda’s stuff,” he said. “She collects antiques. The only things on this floor that are mine are the dining room table and that bookshelf.”
Thank you sweet baby Jesus.
The two pieces that were his were simple, Danish design, expensive. Solid but not heavy-looking. Maple finish – that warm caramel color that makes you want to touch it. Or lick it. The shelf was gorgeous – plain shelves, 7 feet tall, with separate quarter-round shelves attached to either side. Just lovely. And soon to become mine, as he and I got married five weeks later. I’ll save that story for another time.
The upstairs was my favorite part of the house. Carpeted in burgundy (Amanda’s favorite color, clearly), the huge white room was the most welcoming in the house. The ceiling soared to a point easily 15 feet overhead. The window was letting in the golden sunset light, and the moment I reached the top of the stairs I was overcome with a vision of giving birth in that room. I could see it. I barely knew this man, but that room spoke to me like we’d known each other for years. I knew in my soul that this was going to be my house.
Precious little furniture stayed when Amanda moved out two months later and, a week or so afterward, (two weeks after we got married), I moved in with my new husband. The shelves were bare – Amanda had taken her books and tchotchkes, and Randy’s books were still down in his basement office – mostly D&D books and the like. He wasn’t really a big reader. So my beloved books got to live on those caramel shelves. Books I’d had since childhood, books I’d fallen in love with as an adult, and of course larger, heavier coffee table books on the bottom shelf. I didn’t have enough to fill it, but that was okay. It wouldn’t be empty for long.
Our first baby was born a year later, upstairs in that beautiful room, the evening sun illuminating the birthing pool through the giant window. I had Randy anchor those tall, heavy shelves to the wall, and the lower shelves became the home of bins of toys and board books. Over time, picture books were added as the first child grew and the second child was born. The bottom three shelves were the children’s, the next two up were mine, and Randy started keeping a few books on the top shelf: Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare, philosophy and history. I rarely saw him take any down to read them, but at least that poor top shelf was in use.
The children grew all too quickly, toys and board books replaced with easy readers and more interesting picture books. Then it was time for school – but the K-8 school that I wanted them to go to was miles away, in another neighborhood. We would literally have to win the lottery if they were to go there. I didn’t want to take that chance: I wanted Sunnyside Environmental School with its stewardship focus and progressive thinking and, most importantly, the beautiful consistency of elementary through middle school all in the same building, and a thriving school community.
It was a tough decision – we loved our home. Our children had been born there. Randy was enjoying all the remodeling projects I kept coming up with – we had just installed a big jetted bathtub in the master bath, and built a deck off our second story bedroom. But knowing that we needed to be in the Sunnyside neighborhood if we wanted that school, we started looking. On Valentine’s day, 2006, we found a gorgeous 1907 Portland foursquare that was a block from the school, and two doors down from the preschool our son went to. It was a much smaller house but still plenty big for our family, so we downsized – a lot. We got rid of an entire household’s worth of furniture, but those caramel shelves went with us. The bottom shelf was now packed with larger, heavier encyclopedia-type books – those gorgeous Dorling Kindersley books full of photos of insects or mushrooms or children of the world. Gnomes. Dragonology. Every Where’s Waldo and I Spy book. Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (forever and always looking for Gold Bug). Second and third shelves up became home to Frog and Toad, Amelia Bedelia, Skippyjon Jones, Froggy stories, Knuffle Bunny, The Cat in the Hat… all of our favorite picture books at just the right height for the youngest to reach the books he wanted Daddy to read to him. Not a single one of our children’s books was neglected – each and every one was read aloud or pored over again and again, for years.
Of course, over the twelve years we lived there the titles changed somewhat – Narnia adventures and Little House and Harry Potter took their places. Randy and I still had the top three shelves, but as I became fond of young adult novels, my lower shelf doubled as our kids’ shelf too. Eon and Eona. Graceling. The Divergent Books. Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Missing series. The Archived. The Egypt Game. The Legend series. Scythe. The Hunger Games. Most of the picture books went into storage and I was able to use the lower shelves for my knitting and costuming books, history and reference books. Time marched on.
When the kids were teens, we unexpectedly became foster parents, and we suddenly needed a bigger house. The shelves moved with us again – now starting to show the dings and scratches that well-loved furniture earns as it ages. Again it took its place in the living room, now with more adult novels but still laden with young adult books. Photo albums joined the heavier books on the lower shelves. The kids each had bookshelves in their rooms where they began to keep their favorites, leaving more and more empty spaces into which I placed framed photos and heavy clay craft projects, collages of beads and glitter glued to a piece of board. One of the rounded end shelves disappeared along the way, but the surviving one held plants and more framed photos of our family when the kids were little. Jamie hugging a tree. Finn sitting in a large mixing bowl. Both of them curled up next to their daddy. Randy and I on our wedding day. Favorite moments of the past that had flashed by in an instant.
Over time the shelf basically became mine. Randy had an office where he kept his books, the kids had theirs. Even in this great big new house I didn’t have a space of my own, so my stuff was on display. Favorite books by Richard Bach, Jean Hegland, Arthur C. Clarke, Bill Bryson, Pearl S. Buck. Childhood books: Little Women, A Cricket in Times Square, Merry, Rose, and Christmas Tree June, The Secret Language, What the Witch Left, The Sea is All Around. The young adult books that weren’t my kids’ favorites, but I still loved. Many others, random books gathered over the years: The Red Tent. Pope Joan. The Passion of Artemesia. The Descent of Woman. Gift from the Sea. Books that were on my mom’s bookshelf and were now on my own. Books that were loaned to me or given to me. Survival books, midwifery books, poetry books. Books that were recommended. Books I meant to read but never got around to. Beloved books I read once a year. Knitting and crocheting books and magazines. Photo albums, coffee table books, reference books. Photos and plants and crafts in the spaces between. That shelf became a still life of my years – from child to adult to wife and mother.
When my marriage ended 22 years after it began, and I moved into my own apartment, there was no question that the shelves were coming with me. They continued to carry the story of my life and interests, now minus any photos of Randy. Instead, one shelf belonged to my cat – she liked to sleep there on a folded blanket, next to my paperbacks. And when I decided to move back to my hometown, those shelves traveled in a POD across the country to take their place in my big new house. And then again the following year, into my smallest house since childhood, this sweet home where I have grown and healed and finally learned who I am.
My caramel lifestory shelves will not be coming with me this time. Instead they will hold the memories and learnings and precious things of another family. They are still sturdy, still beautiful – they will doubtless last longer than I will. Watching them go out the door was bittersweet – but like so many other things in my life, it was time to let them go. I have whittled my book collection down to a few books I read yearly, and a few new ones, which will ride along in my new home on wheels. The rest of them, along with the photos and albums and tchotchkes are tucked away in bins and boxes; my plant collection has also shrunk so as not to need the rounded end shelves. I still have the board books and some of the toys – still have the favorite picture books and a couple of the young adult books – they live in bins for future grandchildren. Still precious – just no longer on display.
Someday I will get another bookshelf and fill it with new things that are meaningful to me. Things that I collect in this next phase of life I am embarking on. Books that sustain me throughout my life and travels. Books that inspire me, books that teach me. A new life story that will be told over time.
For now, the space has been cleared. Open now. Ready to be filled again.