My own paradise
As life progresses you tend to weed out the uninspiring, the off-putting and the unnecessary.
You even might have a go at the extraneous, the more-than-you-need, the elements that were once a good idea but now, not so much.
But there is one thing that remains after all of the culling of life’s paraphernalia and, next to world peace, cures for horrible afflictions and your friends and family are — closets. OK, maybe closets come before some family members, but that’s a digression.
No matter the square footage of your abode, living a happy and contented life means having a place for the stuff of your life.
There is nothing more frustrating, more able to make you lose sleep, than standing in your house with some of that stuff in your hands and no place to put it.
So, there I was, yet another mug with writing on it that is supposed to make it special. Where do I put it? The cabinets are full. Do I replace one of the other “meaningful” mugs, glasses and cups? Will it live on the counter to hold pencils? Do I add this to the other mugs that are holding pencils and pens, most of which don’t work? Should I send it to one of my less desirable relatives? Hmmm, now there’s an idea. Christmas is coming.
What about clothes?
Our house was built in the 1920s. A house built in the late 20s for a middle class family would not usually have a plethora of space set aside for clothing.
Thus it follows that the closets in our house are both few and small. By small, I mean not only in the amount of clothing that they will accommodate but they are so narrow that all of the hangers have to move at an angle for the doors to clothes. Was this a mistake?
Or, parenthetically, were clothes narrower then? Were there alcoholic beverages involved when these closets were constructed?
As stingy as our house is with closets, the house that I grew up in was even worse.
Our house in Brooklyn had only two closets for six, sometimes eight people.
Granted, we had only a few changes of clothing. There were our school uniforms and shoes, our play clothes and play shoes and one outfit for going to church with accompanying Maryjane shoes.
The girls’ school uniforms hung on three hooks on the back of the door to the bedroom and our shoes lived under the beds.
Everything else including my brother’s clothes, my parents’ clothes and other items like suitcases, etc. were jammed into those two closets. Opening the door to one of them took some finesse.
There is this thing about closet space. If the closets are small, there is the fact that at some point, you no longer needed hangers. You just put a new item in between two others and the pressure would hold it up. You just have to accept that there will be wrinkles. There must be some kind of life lesson in that, but I’ve yet to decipher it.
After I’ve divested myself of the extras and searching for the sublime, I find that I’m not interested in larger rooms, a en-suite bathroom, more granite counters, a garage or even an autographed picture of Robert Redford.
In my fantasies, on my bucket lists there is, very close to the top — a walk-in closet.
It exists in all of its commodious and organized glory as a tantalizing achievement beyond reach.
I do believe that if you look up paradise in the dictionary, you will find a picture of a walk-in. If we create our own paradise, as the poet says, you know where to find me.
