One Picture
A Place for The Bookworm
The year the new built-in finally became part of Christmas at House 173
Some photographs take a while before you realize what they're actually about.
There's the tree, lit up and crowding the right side of the photograph. Red ribbon winds through the branches. Ornaments hang everywhere. Garland stretches across the mantel. The fireplace is glowing. The dining room table is dressed for the season.
But look a little longer.
There's an awful lot of House 173 packed into this one picture.
Because this was the first Christmas with the fireplace and bookcases I'd built.
And after spending months making the thing, I finally got to do what I'd imagined from the beginning.
Put Christmas on it.
The Built-In Was Finally Done
The project had started the previous fall when I removed the old Sauder bookcases that had occupied the wall for about twenty years. In their place I wanted something that looked more permanent—two tall bookcases surrounding an electric fireplace, with a real mantel tying everything together.
I had confidently expected to finish before Christmas.
I did not.
By December I had one bookcase standing and enough experience with the project to realize Christmas was going to arrive whether I was ready or not.
The whole thing wasn't finished until February.
So this photograph is from the following Christmas, the first time the built-in wasn't covered with tools, clamps, pieces of trim and whatever pencil I'd just lost.
Instead, there are lights.
Much better.
There's The Bookworm
But before we get to the fireplace, look above it.
That painting deserves its own story.
It's The Bookworm, or more precisely, a copy of Carl Spitzweg's wonderful old painting of a man standing precariously atop a library ladder, completely absorbed in his books.
Mine was painted for me years ago by an old acquaintance who described himself, rather proudly, as I remember it... as a Master Forger.
That's not a phrase you hear every day.
He wasn't trying to fool Sotheby's with my Bookworm. He painted it for me, and all these years later there it is hanging over the fireplace at House 173.
I haven't known anything about that old fella in many years. I'm sure he's long gone by now.
I hope things worked out well for him.
That's one of those strange little connections an old object can preserve. Someone passes through your life for a while, then everyone goes their separate ways. Years become decades. Eventually you're left with something they made.
And you remember them.
I like that his painting ended up between two bookcases.
Seems only right.
And There's the Fireplace
Underneath it, the electric fireplace is glowing away.
I had wanted a fireplace in this room for years, and building the whole wall myself meant I could make it fit House 173 instead of trying to make House 173 fit something from a furniture store.
Once the garland went across that mantel for the first time, I knew I'd gotten what I wanted.
Not the fireplace, exactly.
The place.
A spot for Christmas lights. A mantel for decorations. Shelves for books and photographs. Somewhere for The Bookworm to live.
That's the difference between building furniture and building something into your house.
Eventually you forget it wasn't always there.
Pull Up a Chair
Then there's the dining room table.
It takes up a good chunk of the foreground, as it should.
A dining room isn't really about the fireplace or the bookcases. It's about the table.
That's where people sit.
That's where dinner gets served, coffee gets poured, Christmas food appears and somebody inevitably puts something down that you're pretty sure shouldn't be sitting directly on the table.
In this photograph it's dressed up with the runner and that big bowl, catching reflections from the Christmas lights. The chairs are pulled in around it, including one positioned directly in front of my newly built fireplace.
Apparently nobody consulted the photographer.
But I wouldn't move it.
The table makes the photograph feel lived in.
Without it, this would be a picture of a Christmas display.
With it, it's our dining room.
Then There's Everything Else
Look at the shelves. They're already full.
Books, family photographs, little objects and that owl peeking out from the right-hand bookcase.
So much for all that beautiful empty shelving I had briefly admired when the project was finished.
The tree nearly overwhelms the right side of the photograph. Red ribbon, white lights and ornaments collected over many Christmases fill the branches. Behind everything is the dark blue wall, which at Christmas does exactly what I hoped it would do—disappear into the background and let all those warm lights glow.
And that's what I like about this photograph now.
The things in it came from entirely different times.
The table had already witnessed plenty of meals.
The painting came from an old acquaintance I'd eventually lose track of.
The books accumulated one by one.
The ornaments arrived over many Christmases.
And the fireplace and bookcases were brand new.
Yet somehow, in this photograph, they all belong together.
That's what happens inside a house if you're lucky.
Things stop being projects and purchases and furniture.
They collect stories.
Then one Christmas you turn on the tree, light the fireplace, sit down at the table and don't think about any of that.
You just live there.
Years later, a photograph reminds you.
And suddenly you can see all of it again.
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
Keywords
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