Doing Things with My Eyes

A little background here. My mother was a homemaker and Navy wife. Every house I lived in during my entire childhood was a rental (except one that my parents built in Danville, IL, which was only ours for a year or two before we were sent to a new station in Japan). We never stayed anywhere long enough for mother to even think about decorating the places...and even if she did, we didn't own the house for her to be able to paint or remodel. Getting a single piece of new furniture was a big deal and always done piecemeal. Mom would ask Dad if she could get a new chair. He'd say, "Whatever you want, Mommy." And being a good steward of the family funds, she would get a new chair...but it never matched anything else nor fit any grand design of interior decoration. I dearly loved my mother, but her taste was all in her mouth! She learned how to "make do" because that is all her generation knew.

Here is an example of that. When I was in second grade, Mom bought a couch and matching chair. She told me then that I needed to take care of that furniture because someday I would be entertaining my boyfriends on it. Huh? Surely, she was joking! Nope...she wasn't. The furniture was upholstered in a nylon looped pile that wore like iron but was dark green and ugly as sin. Sure enough, even after several moves, we still sat on that furniture when I was a teenager. It was still going strong. Mom finally decided she was tired of it. She tried her hand at reupholstering the chair in a gold damask-like cloth, but it was such a tedious job that she despaired of attempting the couch. She had read somewhere that one could paint fabric for a new look, so that's what she did. She painted the couch brown WITH LATEX PAINT. Of course, when the paint dried, the couch with the looped pile was stiff as a board, and scratchy. It would put runners in a pair of nylon stockings at the slightest contact. Did Mom dispose of the couch? Nope! She just put a brown throw over it and kept on using it. Whew!

Okay...so with that, I wanted better when I became a homemaker. I wasn't a champagne-taste woman. Definitely NOT high-maintenance. But I did want things to flow. I looked at a lot of magazines and clipped a bunch of redecorating articles. (Some of which, I JUST threw out this winter--from the 70s!) I didn't have much money, and I learned to "make do" like my mom, but I had a teeny bit of artistic flair...so I would sit in a room and redecorate it with my eyes. This should go over there. That should be lower on the wall. The focus of this room is all wrong. Let's do this... I confess that I even do it in other people's houses. It isn't criticism of their tastes; just learning about mine.

Redecorating with my eyes has evolved into doing work with my eyes as I age. It gets more difficult to do things, so I look at tasks and imagine them done. For instance, the hose in my back yard needs to be coiled and put out of the way. I've done that with my eyes many times. Eventually, I will actually do it! The Patio Project (still ongoing) is another deal. How many years have I looked at the mess and imagined it gone? Well...I'm actually digging in now. There is a sheet back there that I had to make into a floor game for a class that I took many years ago. It is now a sheet that is used to haul autumn leaves from the back yard to the curb. I need to shake it out, fold it up, and store it in the minibarn...and I have...with my eyes. I'll get to it, eventually.

My grandmother, who was confined to a wheelchair the last 15 years of her life, could command what we planted in the garden just by nature of the respect that the rest of the family had for her. Wish I had that kind of power! I keep looking at things and moving them with my eyes. Telekinesis doesn't work for me, but if what is in my heart and eyes could control what goes on around me, I'd sure be happy!