The Pie Safe | My 3 Little Birds- Self-Improvement through Motherhood

Before moving into our new home, the previous owners? dear friends of ours? gave us the opportunity to purchase some of their furniture. They were preparing for retirement and moving to a resort community several states away, and much of what they?d collected over the years would not be going with them.

Happy for the chance, my husband and I walked through the house with new eyes. In the dining room, two cherub sconces flanked a mirror that was a perfect match for the fireplace below it. In the living room an old glass-front library cabinet caught my eye. There were other things, too: an antiqued shelf in the second-floor hallway. A rug, with the perfect amount of wear. Several paintings to remind us that this is a home intended for art (we?ll get there someday).

In the hallway between two bedrooms (which were to become my sons?) a red pie safe housed books and little treasures of lives well-lived. Family photos. Pottery. A delicate weathervane. I fell for it immediately.

Recently the previous homeowner stopped by her old house to collect a few things we were storing for them. She later told me how much it meant to see what I?d done with the red pie safe. I?d used it as an art center for my children, storing crayons, markers, and finger paints inside, and on the shelves I?d displayed their baby books, tiny shoes, and other mementos of their childhoods.

It wasn?t artistically arranged like it had been before. The day she was there, in fact, it was a cluttered mess of construction paper and tangled pipe cleaners from a craft activity gone wrong. But it touched her to see new life being breathed into her old home.

I can?t put my finger on it, exactly, but there?s something about being witness to change as it happens. Accepting it. Embracing it. There?s something about seeing ourselves as part of a larger story: how we drift in and out of spaces, present one moment and gone the next, feel the weight of those who?ve gone before us when we sit at their tables.

The old red pie safe is just an example. We come and go. Some things remain.

Photo Credit: Jason Pier in DC/Flickr

Source: http://my3littlebirdsblog.com/2012/12/the-pie-safe.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-pie-safe

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