For the last week or two, I’ve been thinking about the living room in the house I grew up in a lot.  For most of our time in Aurora, the walls, fireplace, and carpet of our living room were seafoam.  Looking back, maybe it’s nostalgia, but I love the way it was.  When living there, nobody loved it.  My dad did all of the remodeling in our house, and it wasn’t until our last few years there that we had the chance to repaint the walls and fireplace and tear up the old carpet to expose the wood floors below.

Two things about this room:

1.  The other day, I asked Bea if she thought it strange that we never had any furniture in the living room.  She said she had never really considered it, just as I hadn’t until recently.  It was the largest room in the house and the first you saw when walking through the front door, and the only things in the room were an upright piano and reading chair, both at the far end near the fireplace.  This arrangement suited Bea and I nicely in our younger years.  Plenty of space for sleepovers and tumbling and forcing Bea to be the male in my couples figure-skating routine.

2.  Have you ever seen the movie Witches?  Based on the book by Roald Dahl, it’s about a boy who is turned into a mouse by Angelica Huston, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s a painting in the movie in which a person in the painting moves about.  Seriously, if this isn’t in the movie, let me know.  Anyway, in our living room, there was a large painting above the fireplace that came with the house.  In the painting, was a small child standing at the edge of a pond, and I convinced myself that the child would move.  The previous owners obviously left the painting behind because it was haunted.  I was informed yesterday that my parents still have the painting stowed away in their basement.  Just perfect.