Sincerely Regretful

Sincerely Regretful

We enjoy our home, my husband and me.  It has been carefully crafted, in a very real sense, to reflect our aesthetic values.  We have had some experience in that arena.  This is the fourth house we have owned.  The first was in our possession for about fourteen years, the second a mere two years, though we had a great affection for it.  The second was ours for eighteen years, and the final house that is currently our home has been lived in by us for almost twenty-two years.

Each of our homes reflected how we wanted our close intimate environment to look.  An achievement in each case that was a function both of our evolving and growing appreciation for fine objects and our need for practical ones, along with a very tight budget, for in the first forty years of our marriage we balanced our income as best we could with the acknowledgement that it was not a generous one, but one that fit our values closely enough.

Which brings us to the current house.  The culmination, as it were, of our evolution from still-teen householders merging into parenthood, managing to raise three children and make the most of what life has to offer in every sphere, introducing those children to both the pedestrian in life and the sublime, which latter would include exposure to nature and natural surroundings, music, performance, artistic endeavours, and above all, a love of literature.

That's not the main thesis of this little story.  To explain what is, I should linger on the episode of my craftsman-husband transforming the powder room of our current home from attractive to abundantly so.  He ripped out the counter top that was built into the room, replacing it with one of his own design, topping it with dark blue tiles, and interspersed within the dense blue were a number of decorative tiles which held colourful tropical fish and seahorses.

He then built a door to replace the existing one, and this door was framed with wood, but the entire door was constructed otherwise of stained glass, and the design that my husband came up with was an expanded reflection of the decorative tiles, replete with exotic fish and aquatic plants.  The stained glass window he designed reflected some of those same colours but that window was a snippet of our garden with bright and beautiful irises and lilies within a micro-landscape.

Amazingly we found a liquid soap dispenser and matching toothbrush holder a lighter version of that same dark electric blue, and within the blue was encased yellow-and-purple, striped, golden-orange fish, and elfin seahorses, very similar to those of the tiles and the stained-glass door.

One day, while we were shopping at a thrift shop, my attention turned to two women one of whom held a wastebasket standing behind us at the check-out counter.  It was the wastebasket that held my attention, for it had a brilliantly coloured depiction of the very same exotic fish that existed in our powder room.  I spontaneously burst out with that information and the woman holding the basket looked intrigued, then just as spontaneously held the basket out to me.

I hadn't wanted the basket.  I merely found it fascinating that it coincidentally reflected the fish in our powder room, and mentioned it as a point of conversation between strangers.  It isn't at all unusual for me to chat with people I don't know, when we happen to be casually thrown together in some forum or other.  I felt consternation; how to react?  I explained that I hadn't meant that I wanted the wastebasket, I was just remarking on its resemblance to our decor.  Obviously, the woman thought I was being evasive from embarrassment and urged the object on me again, saying "here, take it, it will fit in perfectly with your powder room".

As she handed it off to me, I thanked her profusely, expressing my appreciation for her generosity.  I had, in fact, only meant to be conversational and friendly.  I hadn't wanted the wastebasket.  It wasn't a solid, well-made thing; the sides were comprised of plastic stretched taut over a square frame; the plastic fabric was thin and easy to puncture; the images of the fish were its only saving grace.  And it was mine.  We paid for it, and left the shop.  Arriving home, I set it on the floor of the powder room.

And there it sits to this day.  It's attractive and it fits in very well with the general decor.  And I dislike it heartily.  Each time I empty it, each time I wash the floor and move it, I am dismayed at the fragility of the material of which it is constructed; it is functional and it is a veneer, a facade of something substantial, which it is not.

So why do I keep it?  Beats me.  If I were to shed it, it would represent, I imagine, a discourtesy to the woman who had so generously sacrificed something she obviously thought had value, to a stranger who had expressed admiration and an affinity for it, even if she didn't quite mean what she said to the extent that the woman holding the wastebasket felt she did.