The Long Goodbye

At last the house has been swept clean. All our packing and moving activities have been accomplished, with a little help. I dismantled the last vestige of privacy and decorum when I took down the curtains yesterday, having left only the barest of window coverings up until then. Now the house is impersonal and neutral, ready for refurbishing, a bathroom remodel and little repairs that come with the wear and tear of occupancy.

Memories flew like dust motes from the curtains as I shook them out. My over-the-sink curtains that I had stitched from a pair of kitchen towels—charcoal and ivory graphics spelling KITCHEN running down them, a matching towel cut in half lengthwise to make a valance. No hem necessary, I just pulled threads for a rustic fringed edge.

Then there was the covering for the glass in the kitchen door that led to the back porch. I needed something between a curtain and a shade for privacy, but nothing suited. My kitchen was black and white, so when I saw the red-and- white-striped sailcloth of a barbeque apron, I fashioned its width into a curtain, heavy enough that no shade was needed. The apron strings cut into short lengths became curtain tabs attached with decorative buttons I found in my sewing box. The bib, folded down and hidden from sight in the back, meant no cutting was required.

“I like your bathroom curtains,” the mover said as he handed them to me. “Are they towels?” Yes, new towels that I had looped over the rod, running a stitch through for the tension rod that held them up. “I think I’ll get my wife to make some like this,” he said. I liked them, too, and could enjoy them later as towels!

Like an amateur archeologist, I examined stray papers and scraps of memories chanced upon in closet corners or the recesses of deep shelves. My husband’s forgotten stash of old brief cases yielded obsolete papers and carefully kept records, worthless now, except for an occasional keepsake like the laminated newspaper story and handsome picture of him done by a Christian writer friend many years ago. It was Howard’s remarkable account and testimony of leaving the business world for Christian ministry.

Thankfully, I looked behind an opened closet door and saw a 16 “x 20” matted photograph of our oldest son, Mark, then about two years old, overlooked and hanging on the bedroom wall. The picture is over 50 years old, with Mark now a longtime minister himself. Just another testimony of God’s faithfulness to our family over the years, no matter where we live.