This morning a theme dawns on us

While we were drinking coffee together in the gray light of morning, Bill and I began to discuss our philosophy of decorating. It's not a very common topic for us. Mostly because our life seems overfilled with other things. But I recently finished my next book and I'm waiting to hear the first comments from my editor. Typically this is the time of the year when I get my annual medical check-up, visit the dentist, embark on a new exercise routine and think about other things, like decorating.

I love to watch the cable channels with their home makeover challenges. It's amazing how they can make a room unrecognizable in 72 hours. But now that I think about it, my kids were able to do that in twenty minutes. Decorating is all about style and color and theme. Theme is BIG in the lexicon of decorators. It gives a home, a room, a handle to grab on to. Everything in the room should fit into it and enhance it.

Bill and I were thinking that in our house is lacking in theme, or dare I say, theme-less.

When we married in 2001, my little bungalow was pleasantly full of furniture, knick-knacks, treasured history and objects d'art. Some of it I'd bought, some came from the homes of my parents and grandparents. There are even pieces whose origin is lost to history. (Was this my sister's or did my college dorm mate leave this when she moved out?)

Bill was living in a house just down the street from mine. He had plenty of things as well. And when we plighted our respective troths, well it got pretty crowded around here. Over time we've managed to "outsource" a number of things to kids, friends and Goodwill Industries to the point that we no longer have to clear a path to walk in and out the door.

We have established a rule, that neither of us can buy anything that we don't already have a place for. This works pretty well, but there are still the unexpected additions. This week one of the kids is moving and dropped off a bookcase end table that he no longer wanted. The sturdy piece, constructed from old growth walnut was built by my father in his high school shop class. It was a fixture in my grandparent's living room for perhaps sixty years. My grandfather kept his reading material there and when Grandma got too much for him, he was known to turn down his hearing aid and lose himself in Salvation Army Magazine, the Reader's Digest or the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley.

When my grandparents died, it became mine and it has fitted itself into the numerous apartments and houses with purposes unique to each locale. I'm not sure exactly how it ended up in my stepson's bachelor pad, but it's nice to have it home again and living among those who might occasionally dust it.

Because it is dark wood and has the bookcase feature, we decided to put it here in my office. It fits in nicely and already looks as if it has been a part of this room forever.

So Bill and I sat here, sipping our coffee and admiring it, imagining the wood being carefully cut on the table saw at Oilton High in 1937. Thinking of how proudly Dad might have presented it to his parents, his grade 'A' marked in chalk on the underside.

I remembered it covered with a crochet doily, as the location of the button jar in my childhood. And sitting next to my big reading rocker in my first home in Tulsa, the one with orange shag carpeting.

We speculated on the books that had filled its shelf in the last 73 years. Maybe 1st editions of Cimarron and Grapes of Wrath, a dog-eared copy of The Greatest Story Ever Told. And my own reading history, when Girl of the Limberlost made way for graduate school texts on librarianship, which got replaced by What to Expect When You're Expecting and then Curious George.

That's how, in a discussion of decorating, we figured out our theme. Our decor revolves around memories. It's about looking at our life, and the lives of people we love, in the long term. And everything in every room encourages and enhances that theme. Some day maybe our grandkids will see it the same way.