Yes, what do you see in the piture?
Maybe the ongoing work to provide one of the bedrooms in the house with wardrobes?
If so, you are right.
Almost.
There is more to it.
This is our portal to the future.
And
Their portal to the history.
Same house, same room, same wardrobe, but different time zones.
Yesterday I spent time with myself at the kitchen table. Empty pages, a good pen, and lit candles. “Dear future…”. I didn’t know what to write. Who will live here in the future? Who will decide to disassemble the wardrobes we are just trying our best to install? When will it be? And what do they want to know?
I let the pen wander off by itself. I wrote about the Lucia-dress, which I proudly found in a second hand shop, and which I just had washed and ironed in the basement. I wrote about the not so romantic family gathering in pursuit of the best Christmas tree, which rendered all five us AND the dog upset. I wrote about the aroma of freshly baked chocolate cakes, when we re-entered the hallway and stomped of the snow, and I wrote about my sorrow not being able to watch the school’s Lucia-celebration because of pandemic restrictions, and I wrote about my walk in the forest together with the dog.
All the time I found myself wandering if the things I wrote about will still be there in the future. Will there be a forest? Will the traditions prevail? Will there be any snow?
It took a long time for me to realize what I did NOT write about. I did not write about work. I did not write about professions. I did not write about the political status of neither my country nor the world. I wrote about the small things at hand, the everyday life, small things close to my heart.
And suddenly it poured out of me, I had to share my worries, about the climate change, about the changes I already seen in my lifetime, and my frustrating small efforts to DO something. I wrote about cultivation in our backyard, I wrote about my three composts, I wrote about our choice to only buy organic food, buy an “environmentally friendly” car, NOT buy a second car (and instead bike around the town with violins, cellos, sport bags, grocery bags – and God knows what), and that we haven’t been flying for 7 years. It didn’t help. I found myself trying to defend myself, trying to prove that I DID something to give them a future, when everything within me screamed that I do not do enough.
So, I started to ask questions. What is left of the neighbourhood? What is the climate like? How do they live? I won’t get any answers, but hopefully, hopefully the reader will understand that I care about them, their lives, and their right to be able to create small everyday things in this house, in this world, that they can keep close at heart.
Take care!
Torun