We are an old-fashioned family, finally!
As if it were the Second Coming of Fruition,
news sources bombard us with evidence
that kids cannot afford independence,
and parents cannot escape from
the kids living at home with Mom and Dad
after college,
after work,
after all.
Mari and I, each having been married before,
have had complex opportunities
to extend our family ties.
Part of those opportunities has been a spare bedroom or two.
I have long been a fierce defender of the living room couch,
never granting--hardly ever granting: reluctantly granting--
that it might become a bed. I have stoutly defended my right
to stumble into my own living room, in the middle of the night,
and belch and scratch myself if I needed or wanted to;
where and as I wanted to.
The Lord of the Manor (I have always maintained)
should be free to get up in the morning,
ramble down the driveway to get the newspaper,
and make and drink coffee without having to do it
in what has become a makeshift bedroom annex
occupied by someone crashing on the couch.
Here in Tucson, we live in a small house
with a couple of those ten-foot-square "children's bedrooms"
in addition to our own more adequate room.
We stuffed a queen bed into one of them,
declared it to be for guests, and used the other
for cutting cloth, carding wool, sewing stuff,
googling patterns, and storing pencils and knitting needles.
"There is not room in here to sew!", Mari said,
so she moved the needlecraft and pattern guessing
out to the dining room table. When it appeared
that she was going to move the couch to make room
for the bobbin racks, I declared upon the altar of God
eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
(I owe that line to Thomas Jefferson.)
The queen bed has gone into storage.
The sewing machines have gone to the guest room.
It is something like having the kids move back home.
It is, like having the kids move back in, just for the while,
a curiously mixed pleasure: there is no longer a guest room,
but there hardly ever were any guests, anyway.
It is, on the whole, a much more sensible use of the space.
As if it were the Second Coming of Fruition,
news sources bombard us with evidence
that kids cannot afford independence,
and parents cannot escape from
the kids living at home with Mom and Dad
after college,
after work,
after all.
Mari and I, each having been married before,
have had complex opportunities
to extend our family ties.
Part of those opportunities has been a spare bedroom or two.
I have long been a fierce defender of the living room couch,
never granting--hardly ever granting: reluctantly granting--
that it might become a bed. I have stoutly defended my right
to stumble into my own living room, in the middle of the night,
and belch and scratch myself if I needed or wanted to;
where and as I wanted to.
The Lord of the Manor (I have always maintained)
should be free to get up in the morning,
ramble down the driveway to get the newspaper,
and make and drink coffee without having to do it
in what has become a makeshift bedroom annex
occupied by someone crashing on the couch.
Here in Tucson, we live in a small house
with a couple of those ten-foot-square "children's bedrooms"
in addition to our own more adequate room.
We stuffed a queen bed into one of them,
declared it to be for guests, and used the other
for cutting cloth, carding wool, sewing stuff,
googling patterns, and storing pencils and knitting needles.
"There is not room in here to sew!", Mari said,
so she moved the needlecraft and pattern guessing
out to the dining room table. When it appeared
that she was going to move the couch to make room
for the bobbin racks, I declared upon the altar of God
eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
(I owe that line to Thomas Jefferson.)
The queen bed has gone into storage.
The sewing machines have gone to the guest room.
It is something like having the kids move back home.
It is, like having the kids move back in, just for the while,
a curiously mixed pleasure: there is no longer a guest room,
but there hardly ever were any guests, anyway.
It is, on the whole, a much more sensible use of the space.
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