What Lies Beneath

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you’ll know that I live in an adorable craftsman bungalow that’s almost a hundred years old. Bill and I work on the house a lot. Our joke is that we’re on year 17 of the 5-year renovation plan.

Our most recent efforts involved refinishing the kitchen floor and bringing back the hardwoods in the family room and guest bedroom. Basically that ate up our January, but you should see them. Totally beautiful. Quarter-sawn longleaf pine.

Incredibly worth the effort, but not easy.

We pulled up yards of worn gray carpeting and it’s dusty, eco-unfriendly padding. Below that there was red patterned linoleum tile. Whoever glued that down wanted to make sure it never came up. Of course, it did…slowly…one 9×9 square at a time. The residual glue could be sanded off. The tile-layer’s measure marks, not so much.

Finally it was just a floor, to be stained and buffed and lived on for another hundred years.

I guess what struck me in this was the fact that we didn’t have to put the floors in. They were there all the time. They had simply been hidden by fashionable alternatives of the era. Their strength and beauty disguised by layers of extras that were unworthy of them.

Sound familiar?

Sometimes it might be good for us to remind ourselves that who we are at our core has zero to do with the car that we drive, the clothes that we wear, the place where we live or how much we do, or do not, have in the bank.

I’m not sure where we got the axiom, “what you see is what you get” (I say this as a women whose eyes literally hurt in the evening because I’ve spent so much of my day looking) but while it’s appropriate for the times we live, it’s not really accurate when it comes to people. When it comes to the human species, it’s what you don’t see that’s important. It’s what you don’t see that has the potential to last.

I’m not saying don’t glam it up. If you want to hide your light under gray carpeting, or even red linoleum, go for it. As long as you remember and cherish who you are underneath.

We came into the world naked. And we go out in a shroud (or maybe a nice suit if you’re a Protestant).

It’s what we do while we’re here that matters. Some will do great things with that time. Some will do smaller things. But we can all do some things, even if it’s merely being kind to a stranger or honest with a friend.

Miss you, my friends.

~Pam