Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The turquoise room

I love love LOVE our turquoise room. It is so peaceful and beautiful and so unlike all the other rooms in the house. At least once a day I walk down the hall and just stand in the turquoise room and admire how lovely it is.

The dog likes it too, because it faces west and gets a nice big patch of sunlight in the late afternoon. Almost every afternoon she can be found lying peacefully in that patch of sunlight.

The room is still totally empty. It is not Torsten's office and it will not be anything else until it is a nursery. Both of us are very careful not to call it "the nursery," though, because it isn't, not yet. We generally refer to it as "the turquoise room." Because it is.

I am dying to decorate it. But I am not going to decorate it now, when I am not even pregnant. Even once I am pregnant, I am not going to decorate it until I am out of the first trimester. So the room is destined to stand empty for quite some time. But that is OK. It is still one of my favorite rooms in the house.

It is beautiful. And right now it embodies a lot of hopes and dreams. At this point that is still a positive thing. I could envision a scenario down the line where this room could cause a lot of pain if we aren't able to realize our dreams as easily as we hope. But even if the room never serves the function we envision for it, it is still a beautiful room and can do nicely with another purpose if need be.

But still. Right now, it is our turquoise room, our spoken and unspoken hope for a baby, once we're ready. It is our hopeful future nursery.

When we took off the light switch covers while we were painting, we could see layers of paint from years past. There was the beige it was when we painted it, and a muted blue, and a yellowy cream, and a candy pink, and a white. Years and years of history in the form of old paint.

Our house is 47 years old. In that time this room has had at least six different paint colors. I wonder how many uses it's had. I wonder who has slept there before. The bright pink makes me think it was once a little girl's bedroom. I am guessing that if and when we make it a nursery someday, it won't be the first time for this room. It is a Once and Future Nursery. I hope.

Right now, it is still just the turquoise room. But it is also so much more.

13 comments:

  1. Paint can do such wonders to a room. For a few bucks and a little sweat (hopefully, no tears), rooms can feel like they've been transformed. Maybe you should pick another room to paint - and little by little, your house will become full of dreams, past, present and future!

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  2. So pretty. Who knew there could be so much hope and future in what others might see as an empty room.

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  3. I was JUST thinking about this room of yours yesterday! Probably because we just had a pregnancy scare. Well...not scare exactly because it would be fine, though we aren't planning for it at the moment. ANYWAY. Love this room, and I know it get used in just the way you're imagining.

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  4. I just LOVE those colors. Beautiful room, beautiful sentiment.

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  5. Maybe you should call it the Hope Room? :-)

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  6. that's how i felt about my entire apartment after finally painting it, hah! it was just so beautiful and calm and lovely and i would just sit on my couch and stare happily at my walls ;-)

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  7. This just made me smile. It's the embodiment of hope, that room, and I can't wait to see it full!

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  8. I was just thinking about your turquoise room yesterday. Your post from yesterday made me think about it I guess. I'm impressed with your willpower. I think if I had a room that was such a beautiful oasis I wouldn't be able to resist hanging out there, especially if an adorable dog was also hanging out there in the sun!

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  9. It's so lovely and airy and beautifully compliments those gorgeous floors. It's going to make the perfect nursery! And aren't old homes lovely for all their history? I've really enjoyed discovering all of the old paint colors in our house.

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  10. Turqouise is my version of your purple obsession. I'm hoping to have my own turquoise room of my own one day (and a nursery to plan for). Enjoy it being a quiet room for now!

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