What Makes a Beautiful Home

The house was torn down several years ago, but I can still see it and feel it.  It was Momma’s house, and it was stable and secure.

No matter what was happening in the world outside, home remained the same.

It was where we lived.  We went there at the end of the day.  We ate dinner together at night, holidays came and went in the same way year after year.

Our house was different than anyone else’s that I knew.

The front door opened directly into the keeping room.    The keeping room had old brick floors salvaged from a house downtown, it had V-edged pine paneling and a massive brick hearth with a wood-burning fireplace.  The room was charming. We put the Christmas tree in there every year.  Nobody ever just sat in there, except our dates when they came to pick us up.  Momma sat with them.

The house had three levels, and the dining room was the center.  It opened directly on to the keeping room. Its floors were salvaged heart pine from the 1800s.  Our house was unique.  It was an early American style with a steeply slanted slate roof. Mrs. Betty Friske, whose husband was a Presbyterian minister, built it.  She built several houses around Springhill.

The living room opened off the dining room and had the same heart pine floors. We only went in the living room on special occasions; it was the dressed-up room.  Daddy would go in there at night sometimes to read in the quiet.

The dining room table was a mahogany with Queen Anne legs, to call it an antique would be a stretch, but that is what it was.  But unlike most dining room tables, it didn’t expand.

There were six Queen Anne chairs.

That worked for us, there were only five in our family with room for a friend.

We ate dinner around that table every night.

There was a system. One of us set the table, one cleared it, and one stacked the dishes.

We didn’t wash them.

We had a housekeeper, Marie, and Momma had no interest in dealing with the kitchen at the end of the day. So, after dinner, the plates were neatly stacked and waited for Marie the next morning.

We had assigned seats at the dining room table. I don’t know how that came about. It just was.

Daddy sat at the head of the table in the armchair. I sat on his right. Margaret sat next to me. Mom sat at the end opposite from Daddy with Margaret on her left and Carolyn on her right.

Plates were served in the kitchen, straight from the stovetop.

Mom dished out the food, and we carried our plates to the table.

There were two reasons for this.

First, fewer serving dishes to clean up.

Second, Mom already knew the proportions. She made sure Daddy had the right amount and there would be enough left for her and Marie to have lunch the next day.

Nothing was wasted and no unnecessary dishes.

Meatloaf was on the menu a lot because it was sensible and cheap.

Marie knew we didn’t like meatloaf.

One day, she put quarters in the meatloaf to entice us to eat it.

Momma got the quarters.

We accused her of cheating.

We still had to eat the meatloaf.

She kept the quarters.

Practical.

Very Mom.

Daddy loved good manners.

No elbows on the table, and everyone stayed until the meal was finished.

This usually meant we were waiting for Daddy, who declared eating an art form.

We talked a lot around the table. A friend of mine commented that she remembered laughing at our table all the time. Margaret was always the funny one.

We talked about school and friends. Daddy would suddenly ask something like, “What is the difference between the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed?”  or “Is change always progress?”

Random.

Sometimes we knew the answer.

The den was small and ran along the back of the house you had to go thru the dining room or kitchen to get there.  Everything across the back of the house was paneled in pine V-edge paneling. I longed for carpeted floors and plaster.

The tv was in there.

There were three channels: CBS, NBC and ABC.

We had to agree on what to watch.

Sunday night was popcorn night.

We had popcorn and Hawaiian Punch and watched Walt Disney Presents and Bonanza.

The den changed very little over the years. The rugs came and went. We had several hooked rugs, and then Mom decided to update the room with shag.

That was a grave mistake.

But Momma was Momma, and we lived with it.

The sofa had been around almost as long as we had. I think Momma and Daddy bought it when they moved to Mobile in 1955. It was a sleeper sofa, originally brown, then slipcovered and finally upholstered in olive-green Naugahyde.

That sofa stayed until Hurricane Frederic blew out the back windows in 1979.

There were various club chairs scattered around the room, and everybody had a seat.

We spent a lot of time in that room.

Marie set up the ironing board there every day. At eleven o’clock, the “stories” came on. There was All My Children, Days of Our Lives and Another World. Marie was a fan of ‘the stories.’

During the summer, lunch was served on trays in the den. Marie fixed it, usually from the leftovers.

If we were lucky, she added fresh cornbread, sliced tomatoes and the world’s best sweet tea.

There was no such thing as a light lunch at our house.

I have spent much of my life creating beautiful rooms. I know beauty matters. When I think about the house I grew up in, it isn’t the rooms I remember. It is the ordinary days that are not worth remembering but somehow, those memories carve out the meaning of home.

Home wasn’t beautiful like a magazine; it was beautiful because we were loved and cared for inside its walls.