Home. What does that word mean to you? Comfort, safety, love? A roof over your head? The place where you can hang your hat? The place where, when you go there, they have to take you in (thank you, Robert Frost)? Home for me is many places. I have a home in York Beach, Maine (not literally – yet), and I still think of Nashville as a home away from home. Home is also my hometown of Penn Yan, and, more specifically, my mom and dad’s house. And home is also where I currently live.
Why all this talk about home? Over the weekend, I was moving some furniture and doing some cleaning, and I got annoyed (or rather, re-annoyed) by the carpet in my master bedroom, which has a stupid bump in the middle of it. It happened last year, got worse over the hot, humid summer, shrank a bit over the cold winter, and is now growing again. I could call someone who stretches carpets, sure. Or I could maybe recarpet the room, or the whole upstairs. What carpet might I choose? Would I go with something plain and simple, like what I have now? Or would I go with a wild, bright color?
And those thoughts led me to thinking about how many people don’t do what they might truly like to do to their homes, because one day they’ll need to put it on the market. I get that, I do. You might have a burning desire to paint your living room bright teal, or your bathroom sunset orange, but why bother when you’re probably going to have to repaint it eggshell or ivory or whatever boring color makes prospective home buyers best able to see the potential in your place. Might as well keep it bland the whole time you’re living there, so you don’t have to change it later, right?
And (are you still with me?) that led me to thinking about the other place each of us calls home: our bodies. It’s the one home that is with you for your entire life. You are never without it. How do you choose to decorate that body? How do you present it to the world? Are you holding off on doing things because you’re waiting for some future state, when your body looks different?
For years and years, black was my wardrobe staple. I used it to hide my body and myself from the world. Now, I can’t get enough color. Give me bright teal and sunset orange and fuchsia and lime green. Give me sequins and stripes and sleeveless shirts.
I can’t wait for the “right” time to wear these things, because, if I wait until I’m the “right” size, that time might never come. I don’t want to live in a plain white house forever. I want to make it mine. I don’t want to hide myself away. I want to show myself to the world. How about you?
