It was a crisp Autumn day and our little family was trekking from one errand to the next. We needed to squeeze in our 3 year old’s nap, our 8 year old’s playdate, lunch and many other odd end things that were equally important. Than evening we were hosting a party for our children’s school. It was a potluck and bottle event. My husband and I love welcoming people into our home. Our big old Victorian is conducive to large events such as these. I am usually a nervous wreck before these events but I was oddly calm.
There was a joke that my husband made about our house having 3 living rooms, 2 dining rooms, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Something about the numbers of the rooms tickled my funny bone and I couldn’t stop laughing. I live for moments as such. Why do we need so much room? We don’t and are humbled and honored that we live in a piece of history and making our own history.
Our dining room downstairs has a large 12 foot antique wooden table that I bought on a while a week after we moved into the house. I couldn’t live without the table. It’s the kind of table you see in movies where friends and family sit around laughing and talking during dinner with glasses clanking and food that is fit for a king. I always imagined the table would be used in that way. The table, from the moment I saw it meant something grander than what it was. I saw memories, relationships, growth in my family, history but most of all, a firm rooting into the soul of what we are as a family and the core of who I am as a person. This was the table that would fit our family for Thanksgivings, Christmas’s, New Years, and parties we would hold for our children, our family, and our lives. I’m a hopeful romantic in so many ways. I believe in love, love at first sight, true friendships that last, I believe in the kindness of humans, I believe in all that happens and doesn’t happen. I also believe that we make decisions in our lives that will change the course of our life. I know, because I have seen the result in the decisions I have made in my life.
As we drove past Difara’s on Avenue J and saw that the gate were pulled down it meant we weren’t going to have Brooklyn’s best pizza for lunch. I remembered that there was a house in the neighborhood that was having a moving sale. 544 East 18th Street immediately came into my mind and before I knew it we were headed there. They had a baby grand piano that I knew we probably couldn’t afford but maybe some furniture for our big house would be nice.
The houses in my neighborhood are nothing less than amazing. The rooms have history imbedded into the floorboards and in every detail these Victorian era houses were built in. I am always honored and humbled walking into these homes. Their beauty silences me. The houses stand taller and higher than modern skyscraper that can ever be built today. The Americana they exude was a side I was never aware of before I moved into my house. I live in my house and it is like we are in a foreign land that we respect and are learning about. Our husband I didn’t come from this. IS this what they call the American Dream? We have lived in our house for 3 years I still quietly ask her permission before I place any new furniture or paint her walls. She’s been around longer than any of us have.
I walked into the house with the moving sale and looked at the staircase, the wooded details and Victorian stained glass. The furniture they were selling matched the wood details that ran through the house. Although, beautiful, their furniture would not have worked in our house. Our house would not have accepted it. The house I stood in and the house we lived in had two different personalities and characters of their own. The owner of the house was in the kitchen. She was selling the house because her children were in college and they no longer needed all the space. She had completed this chapter of her life.
I walked past a baby grand piano and smiled.
I hesitated to asked for the price. 1K.
Within 15 minutes I paid for the baby grand.
Within 10 minutes I found a piano mover.
Within the hour the piano showed up at our front door and assembled in 10 minutes flat.
As the movers left I looked at the grand piano in our “music” room on the first floor (one of 3 living rooms in the house) and I was in disbelief.
It was the romantic inside of me that allowed this to happen. I believed that one day I would be able to grace our home with a baby grand. I never thought that day would come so soon. Our 8-year-old jumped up and down with joy. Suddenly, I felt as if our home, our house, as the character that I think she is became so happy and joyous. It was as if I had fulfilled the dream the house always had.
That was when I realized that I have not lost faith. I still jump and risk the fall and it has always been worth it. The faith that love happens, life happens, miracles happen and believing that there are amazing things in our world brings surprising, unsolicited wonders to our days.
When I woke up that morning, I never would have thought a baby grand would be delivered to the house that day. That is why a day, in one’s life, is so incredible.
Life, never ceases to surprise me and that is why living is so important and believing the beauty of it is so key to finding peace.
My search for beauty continues.
I love our unexpected baby, Stella.
It’s a lovely thing to have a baby grand piano in your home. Making music is one of life’s great pleasures for me