This is my home office, where I work somewhere between two and five days a week.
Although 99% of my time in this room is spent sitting in that chair, staring at that screen (and an extended screen), and pounding on that keyboard, I’ve surrounded myself with memories.
Come with me on a tour, won’t you? (That’s actually done by standing in the middle of this teeny-tiny room and just having a look around.)
There are two bulletin boards in my home office. One holds important work documents. This is the other one:
In addition to lots of photos of my birth family, there’s an edelweiss flower from Mom’s homeland, Bavaria, along with a nametag that she probably wore when she was on the Ski Patrol in California. There’s also a photo of Dad and his new wife, Lou, whom I adore. And there are the programs from the memorial services, both for Mom and for my dear friend Kristin.
These two photos sit on the window sill:
That’s Mom and me when I was in high school and Dad and me when I was in college.
Under the bulletin board with all the family photos and memorabilia are these paintings by Dad…
…of the house I lived in from the time I was in eighth grade until I went away to college in Santa Barbara. That little house is no longer there. Some gazillionaire bought it, razed it, and built this:
At least the pool is still there, but they even made massive changes to it.
I love what they did, but it doesn’t change the fact that my childhood home is gone from everywhere but my memory. (And maybe that’s the most important place for it to remain.)
This circular object hanging on my office wall…
…is the hat box Elisabeth made me for Mother’s Day while she was away at college. She made simple black and white copies of pictures of me throughout my life and ModgePodged them onto the hat box. I love this gift!
And then there’s the photo gift from Mom, given to me two Christmases before she died.
That’s her and Dad, and me with my now-51-year-old baby brother, Chris.
Right next to the door is a candle given to me by Elisabeth, sitting on a gift from the staff of the Mumbai-based office of the Microsoft agency I used to work for. They gave Tom and me this silver piece for our 25th wedding anniversary. I adored these people, and as much as I hated working every single evening for two solid years, they made it bearable and, at times, even wonderful.
And now, I’ve played too long in this office filled with memories. Time to get to work!
Your mom was a beautiful and elegant woman! Such class! And your dad is a talented painter. I am impressed.
ReplyDeleteWow, your mom looks like Anne Bancroft in that pic. Gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteAnd, while it's too bad that your childhood home is gone, sometimes I think better that the place is beautiful and kept up nicely, rather than if it were bought by someone who let it go to seed! (That's why my sister can't bear to sell her house... she's spent so much time on the gardening, she says she won't let someone else let it go to hell until she moves far enough away to never have to see it!)