Living Room Memories

 

When I grew up, we were probably middle or lower-middle class.  The first three homes we lived in were flats.  The fourth was a one-family home.  Each of these houses had only three communal or gathering rooms:  the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room.  Other than for meals, the living room was the central gathering place for family and guests.  It is where the television and phonograph were.  It was where we lived and interacted in most of our waking hours at home.

It wasn’t until we moved to Livonia, that we had a family room, a fourth gathering room.  Our married homes in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Wilton, Ct, and now Lake Forest, IL all have family rooms.  In each of these homes, the family room became the main gathering place for family life.  The living room was rarely used.  It was used basically used mainly when we had a house full of guests.

I have basically spent the last 13 days of knee replacement recuperation in our family room.  Even at night, I sleep in the old guy ortho recliner in the family room.  When I woke up this morning at around 6 am, I decided to go sit in our living room and do my daily writing.  It was, of course, a change of venue.  I also wanted to use the lovely room we rarely use.  It was a beautiful clear summer morning and sunshine made the room glow.

I did read about our bombing of the three nuclear facilities yesterday on various news sites.  I read the polarized social media postings and comments.  They were most certainly polarized around whether one was pro or anti-Trump confounded with being pro and anti-Israel.  Our world suddenly became more serious and grimmer.  I will certainly have to post more about this in the next few days.

But this lovely morning, I shut the laptop and reflected on living rooms.  These reflections quickly gravitated to the living rooms in my grandparents’ homes in Detroit and Watertown; living rooms where I have so many fond memories growing up.  The furniture, carpet, wall paper, tables, lamps, and woodwork, the scenery, of those living rooms where merely the scenery.  It was the people, the family and the guests that gathered in those rooms along with what we all said, did, and shared.  It was also a time when my grandparents were more vibrant and active. 

I was thinking of my own living rooms and how this one was the most finely appointed of all of them and the least used.  I was sipping a double espresso in a demitasse from Armenia and enjoying the moment.  It was a most lovely way to spend a Sunday morning.

Tomorrow I will be returning to a more normal schedule and attending to things that need to be done.  Jokingly, I have returned to posts like this as a blog about nothing.  Well, this may seem like that to many.  It is nothing profound.  It won’t change anything in the world.  It may trigger a warm memory for a few others of their own grandparents’ living rooms.  For me, it is also small theme on the grand scale of things but this morning it took center stage.

We have two grandchildren coming to Camp Medzig and Dede, as they call us, in August.  I hope we can have some wonderful times that became fond memories for them.  Whether the backdrop is our living or family room doesn’t matter.