Girlie post filled with domestic details … :
My mother and I had been talking about getting nice curtains for my main room for about a year now. One of those: “We’ve got to do that …” But then finally – last month, we went to pick out fabric, after I had measured the windows. The project had begun. She and I went together, browsed, asked questions, I agonized over my choices, I tried to picture living with the fabric, day in, day out …
I had a fantasy for my room. My room has pale yellow walls. It has a gorgeous hard-wood floor. I have a small Oriental rug, with dark colors – dark blue-black, deep maroon … The ceiling is high, and old-fashioned – it has a pattern on it, like those old tin ceilings. It’s a white painted ceiling. Then I also have a huge ceiling fan. On one wall I have a large window, with a nice wide sill. This is where I live. I have a small kitchen off to the side, but I spend all my time in that main room. I’ve got dingy blinds in the window, leftovers from the former tenant, completely uninteresting.
I’m not into sunlight, really. I don’t like bright colors, they give me a headache, and make me nervous, and I like my room to feel a wee-bit cave-like. Cozy. Like I can shut the world away, and be safe and warm in my humble abode. Basically, what I’m saying is – billowy sheer white curtains are not my style.
So I picked out this heavy dark fabric – a deep dark chocolate-y brown, with a Paisley pattern in it (but not a Paisley pattern that would give you a migraine … it’s more like the memory of a Paisley pattern, swirling through the dark brown). I just liked it. It reminded me of a dream. I could see it … the dark brown in contrast to the pale yellow walls … I knew I could live with it. I loved it.
My dear mother became a Tasmanian devil and made me the curtains in a matter of 2 days.
She and my dad drove down yesterday to bring the curtains, and to hang out … spend a bit of time together …
It’s in these circumstances, these moments of simple pleasures … that I realize, in my heart: There are moments, indeed, when curtains = love. I look at my gorgeous curtains and I can see the love that my mother has for me.
My curtains make me ridiculously happy.
My dad brought his tools. And he went to work setting up the hooks, the brackets, measuring, marking, drilling, etc. You know, the “guy” side of curtain-hanging.
Meanwhile, my mother and I are busy huddled over the curtains, clipping on the little hooks, and handing up tools to my dad if he needed them. The “girl” side of curtain-hanging.
It’s in a moment like that when I realize: my dad with the drill gun = love.
It is not SAYING “I love you” that matters at all. It is what you DO. What do you DO?
My dad was busy at work, doing his manly part of the project, and my mother was showing me the basket she had made for me – well, she didn’t make the basket itself – but she lined the basket with the same material as the curtains. To put on my dresser, perhaps.
So there’s all these projects happening in my small space.
And I felt kind of overwhelmed by love. You know? I felt lucky. That’s what I felt.
It was beautiful. Beautiful to have them down in my apartment, we talked, we laughed (once the curtains were up) – we sat in my little kitchen, we caught up a bit. I kept peeking back into my main room at the unbelievable GORGEOUSNESS of my new curtains. The deep dark brown folds, hanging next to the pale yellow walls … It changes the feel of my room. It feels cozy, enveloping … warm.
Thank you, Mum, thank you, Dad … for … well, for everything. I woke up this morning, made coffee, sat in my little cozy chair, and stared up at my beautiful new curtains for, no word of a lie, 20 minutes.
Reveling in the simple pleasure of it.
My mother also bought me my window treatments – though in my case ivory-colored patterned fabric shades that everyone comments on when they visit my house. It is a lovely thing, a mother wanting her daughter to live well, to have beautiful objects around her house to cheer her up.
lovely post, red.
I know just what you’re talking about. I have lace curtains in my dining room made by my mother over one Thanksgiving visit. I also have bedroom curtains she made for me in response to my comment that my neighbors’ security light shone in my window at night and woke me up.
When I was in the process of buying the house, my dad helped me figure out all the paperwork stuff and helped me know what I needed to do when. That made all the difference in what was kind of a scary time, where I was afraid I’d screw one thing up and miss out on getting the house.
It’s really the small things, I think, and not the big fancy things (the Christmas presents, the gifts of jewelry at various graduations) that show us that the people who love us, love us.
I need to learn how to sew, pronto, so I can do the same thing for my child. When I have them, I mean.
I can mend, and do buttons, and fix hems and stuff like that – but to MAKE something??
I can knit. So maybe I could knit my child some window treatments, and accept that I will be the freaky mother on the block.
Sheila, I know that sensation of feeling lucky. My mom would never sew curtains (nor knit them!) but what she could and did do was give me money to help me buy new windows for my house. And though I still don’t have curtains, I don’t care. I like the windows – and looking at and through them – so much, I’m not sure I’ll ever get anything to cover them up.
HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAHAHHAAH Knit window treatments!!!!!!!!!!!!HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA
I love your parents!
and I hate the term “window treatments”