Read Online Home by Another Way by Robert Benson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Benson
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wentthrough the boxes. In the end, we only gave away about a half dozen or so. How can you give away old friends you have loved and have not seen in such a long time?
These days, when we go to St. Cecilia, we are down to mostly hauling books. Partly because I cannot afford to hire the small jet it would take to get us and all the other stuff down there. Partly because St. Cecilia has been changing me. I am trying to figure out how to pack and carry what are essentially the nonessential essentials, whatever that means.
I still believe you gotta have your stuff. I just don’t gotta have so much of it as I once thought I did.
Everything about being in St. Cecilia is simpler. The more that it becomes home to us, we find it takes less and less stuff to make it so.
The house has a little bit of a kitchen to cook in. It is small enough that you can reach nearly everything while standing in one place. It has enough dishes andutensils to do the job and yet not enough so you can pass on cleaning up after yourself as you go. If you do not wash out the cups after you use them, there will be nothing clean when you go to have tea. If you do not wash things and dry them and put them away, then there is no room to make a sandwich when you are ready for lunch.
There is a room that is both a living room and a dining room. It is where one of you sits and talks while the other one is cooking in the kitchen. The kitchen will hold the two of you but only if you have your arms around each other. Which happens here in the tropics from time to time, but it tends to delay mealtime.
This one room is where you eat and where you play cards and where you sit late into the evening to read. One of my favorite things about this room is that it will hold so little it only takes about three minutes to pick it all up before bedtime, so it is neat and clean in the morning when we rise. Most all of the stuff we need to feel at home in St. Cecilia will fit on the coffee table.
The bedroom has a bed in it and a pair of nightstandsto hold the lamps you need so you can read at night. It has a small closet and some shelves for the clothes you need as long as you did not give in to the urge to bring more than you have shelves for.
If you need more stuff, you would have a hard time finding a place to put it.
You would also have a hard time finding much more stuff on St. Cecilia.
On our first trip to St. Cecilia, we set out one afternoon to do some shopping before it was time to head home. We wanted to take something home to the children and to the people who watched out for our house and our children and our cats while we were gone. Then it occurred to us we might do a bit of Christmas shopping while we were at it.
We like to think of ourselves as discriminating when it comes to buying gifts. Most people think that about themselves, I am sure, but we have a kind of congenitaldisdain for certain kinds of things that people often buy when they travel—we are not really big on T-shirts with slogans or shot glasses with
St. Cecilia
written on them. So we set out to look for other things.
Here is the thing we discovered. There is nothing much to buy on St. Cecilia. We went in and out of all sorts of places, and the truth is, we ended up with most of our money still in our wallets.
We have discovered that while you are in St. Cecilia, once you have paid for a place to stay, you spend your money on food and supplies and newspapers. There is not much else to spend it on.
We did make a trip out to Newcastle one day to buy some pottery from Mrs. Jamison. She fires it on the ground, without a kiln. She covers it with palm branches and then covers the palm branches with old corrugated metal roofing to bank the fire and to hold the heat in. We drove right by it the first time; we thought it was just a lady burning trash in her backyard. It turns out she was making art.
There is a pair of art galleries on the island with afair number of works by local painters and
These days, when we go to St. Cecilia, we are down to mostly hauling books. Partly because I cannot afford to hire the small jet it would take to get us and all the other stuff down there. Partly because St. Cecilia has been changing me. I am trying to figure out how to pack and carry what are essentially the nonessential essentials, whatever that means.
I still believe you gotta have your stuff. I just don’t gotta have so much of it as I once thought I did.
Everything about being in St. Cecilia is simpler. The more that it becomes home to us, we find it takes less and less stuff to make it so.
The house has a little bit of a kitchen to cook in. It is small enough that you can reach nearly everything while standing in one place. It has enough dishes andutensils to do the job and yet not enough so you can pass on cleaning up after yourself as you go. If you do not wash out the cups after you use them, there will be nothing clean when you go to have tea. If you do not wash things and dry them and put them away, then there is no room to make a sandwich when you are ready for lunch.
There is a room that is both a living room and a dining room. It is where one of you sits and talks while the other one is cooking in the kitchen. The kitchen will hold the two of you but only if you have your arms around each other. Which happens here in the tropics from time to time, but it tends to delay mealtime.
This one room is where you eat and where you play cards and where you sit late into the evening to read. One of my favorite things about this room is that it will hold so little it only takes about three minutes to pick it all up before bedtime, so it is neat and clean in the morning when we rise. Most all of the stuff we need to feel at home in St. Cecilia will fit on the coffee table.
The bedroom has a bed in it and a pair of nightstandsto hold the lamps you need so you can read at night. It has a small closet and some shelves for the clothes you need as long as you did not give in to the urge to bring more than you have shelves for.
If you need more stuff, you would have a hard time finding a place to put it.
You would also have a hard time finding much more stuff on St. Cecilia.
On our first trip to St. Cecilia, we set out one afternoon to do some shopping before it was time to head home. We wanted to take something home to the children and to the people who watched out for our house and our children and our cats while we were gone. Then it occurred to us we might do a bit of Christmas shopping while we were at it.
We like to think of ourselves as discriminating when it comes to buying gifts. Most people think that about themselves, I am sure, but we have a kind of congenitaldisdain for certain kinds of things that people often buy when they travel—we are not really big on T-shirts with slogans or shot glasses with
St. Cecilia
written on them. So we set out to look for other things.
Here is the thing we discovered. There is nothing much to buy on St. Cecilia. We went in and out of all sorts of places, and the truth is, we ended up with most of our money still in our wallets.
We have discovered that while you are in St. Cecilia, once you have paid for a place to stay, you spend your money on food and supplies and newspapers. There is not much else to spend it on.
We did make a trip out to Newcastle one day to buy some pottery from Mrs. Jamison. She fires it on the ground, without a kiln. She covers it with palm branches and then covers the palm branches with old corrugated metal roofing to bank the fire and to hold the heat in. We drove right by it the first time; we thought it was just a lady burning trash in her backyard. It turns out she was making art.
There is a pair of art galleries on the island with afair number of works by local painters and
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