Hanging Pictures

One of my best friends from high school, Donna, lives in a beautiful home in Raleigh-Durham.  It is filled with lovely furniture and she and her husband have raised three children, mostly in this house.  There's only one thing wrong.  I went to visit her last year and it took me a few minutes to notice, but I finally saw...there was no artwork on the walls - no pictures, oil paintings, framed prints, not even a poster.  We sat on her big, luxurious sofa in the great room and I asked her why.  Why are your walls empty? I asked.  I'm afraid, she said.  Afraid of what?  Afraid that I'll put the wrong things on the wall, and it won't look good and I'll look stupid, she said.

I was dumbfounded.  Here was my beautiful, successful, wonderful friend - a woman who always has a kind word for everyone, who everyone immediately likes upon meeting and she couldn't get a piece of art on the wall.  I, on the other hand, put everything I love on the wall. If it speaks to me, it's mine and I put it up fearlessly.  When I lived in a very small apartment recently, I still put all the artwork up - it looked like a museum, and I didn't give a whit about what anyone thought.

But, it made me think.  How many of us don't do something we want to do in our lives because we are scared - of making a mistake, of being judged; or we just wait - for the exact right thing, person, moment?   How many of us buy something beautiful and then never use it - saving it for a special occasion?  Recently, I decided to wear a pair of lovely, expensive leather and canvas pumps with cute leather tassels that I bought almost 6 years ago and have probably worn four times. They are lovely, but I worry that the canvas will get dirty and they'll be ruined.  So they sit in their box, high on the shelf in the closet.  Last week, I decided they'd be perfect with my cute JCrew seersucker suit and I pulled them off the shelf.  I opened the box that had not been opened in probably two years and...well, those beautiful shoes were ruined.  No, they weren't ruined, they had gotten old in their box and being old, the leather trim had come loose from the canvas and I don't know - frayed?  shrunk, lost elasticity? It didn't matter, they were ruined and even when I put them on, I knew they couldn't be repaired; certainly not to their former glory.  Their shelf life was over, so to speak.  They sat in that box, loved only from afar and got old.

I know - you're thinking - really??  A pair of shoes?  But those shoes remind me that life is short and shoes are meant to be worn.  So what if they had gotten dirty eventually?  I would have worn them and loved them and every time I put them on, I would have felt sexy and pretty.  Now, I feel sad that I didn't just wear them.  And annoyed at myself.

I have a chest filled with table linens just begging to be used, thrown on the table.  I have plates I only use once or twice a year.  Why? I have lingerie that I am saving for a special occasion. Why?  What if I never sleep with another man ever again in my life? (Not likely, but let's just suppose for the sake of this argument.)  My lingerie will just sit in the drawer for another 20, 30, 40 years?  Will I even want to wear this stuff in 10 years?  Will it still be sexy or will it, like the shoes, be frayed, moth eaten, old? What if I get fat and dumpy and I'm just a 60 year old matron with a drawer full of amazing lingerie that no longer fits me that now just needs to be thrown away?  But here is the big question, the real question:  Why don't I wear my sexy lingerie just for myself?

Why don't I use my table linens and my plates and my special serving pieces for myself?  Why do I save things to impress other people instead of surrounding myself with and enjoying the beauty of my possessions all alone?  Why does my friend Donna care what anyone thinks about what is on her walls? The art on our walls is just an extension of ourselves, an expression of our personality both the dark and the light.  Everything we own is an expression of ourselves and a reflection of how we see ourselves. Any expression of ourselves makes us vulnerable.  We have to continue to be open and vulnerable or we start growing old and dying.  And we have to remember to enjoy the beauty around us.  It does us no good high on a shelf, wrapped in tissue and rarely used.

Donna and I talked about this again today and I extracted a promise from her.  We are spending the weekend together - she is going to help me find a place to live in my new town and while we are together, we are going shopping.  She has promised to buy one thing that "speaks" to her and take it home and put it on the wall.  No matter what.  No worries about what anyone else thinks.  This will be for her.  Because the truth is, an empty wall says just as much about us as a wall with a velvet painting of dogs playing poker or a wall with a Monet hanging on it.  She is going to buy exactly what she wants with no help from me.  I will love whatever she picks because it will reflect her beauty, her spirit.

And me?  I'm gonna start wearing that special lingerie.  Maybe I'll cook a wonderful dinner and set a table for one with my "once a year" china atop my gorgeous linens and eat it all wearing my sexy lingerie.  What am I waiting for?