Décor was one of my challenges occupying a new home. As mentioned before, there had been no need for me to make aesthetic decisions the previous 25 years. My former wife was kind enough and keen-eyed enough to make the necessary choices.
When moving in, my interior decorating schemes were minimal. The rooms’ layout was dictated by the furniture brought with me. My new home seemed fresh-painted, and while the colors may not have been exactly what I would have selected, they looked clean. As for my few prints and paintings, their placement was informed exclusively by where nails were already in the walls, ready for hanging.
Now two-and-a-half years in my new domicile, I have recently needed to consider my options for a setting with visual appeal. This necessity arose when my sweetie gifted me with 16 framed photos, secretly scavenged from my social media pages, my sister, and a disorganized file cabinet searched during a previous visit to see me, then mounted and framed.
Since then, I have struggled to determine where they would look best. For weeks, the assorted portraits and enlarged snapshots lined the baseboards, snuggled up against the walls of their future gallery. Every now and then, I would hold an image in each hand against the blank wall space, wondering how they would appear in different orientations.
But the time comes when enough is enough. I got tired of not being sure where this picture or that photo would look best, so I said to heck with worrying about it, let’s make some holes. As my lady friend had included picture hangers as part of her gift, I pulled the hammer from the toolbox and threw caution to the wind.
Now some image of someone I care about adorns every room in my house. In addition to posed portraits with my parents and siblings, I appear in blown-up snaps as old as 1964 and as new as last year. Then there are images from before my birth, shared via e-mail by my mother’s kin.
Thus, each day I see my grandmother, dressed for a formal sitting before the camera, so unlike her everyday apparel around the farm. I gaze at the only existing image of my mother and her nine siblings, arranged around the farmhouse’s living room couch.
And I marvel at the shot of my mom, young and radiant on the front steps of some L.A. apartment, holding my big brother, John, as a baby.
As the first anniversary of his death approaches, I stare at other pics of John, poignantly reviewing phases of his life – boy, man, proud father, loving grandfather.
Actually, there’s an element of melancholy in most of the new images gracing my space. I’ve had to get used to having so many dead loved ones sharing my every day.
But it’s kind of nice, actually, to have them with me. These are the people whose lineage I came from, people who loved and knew me, people I loved back.
Having them regarding me from the walls makes the place feel more like home, and if you feel at home, the décor is doing what it should.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at pgwriter@inbox.com.