Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [80]
Home 171
Where is everyone moving to? Why are they moving there? Is it really better someplace else?
If people want a better house, why don’t they fix the one they have?
If the boss says they’re being transferred and have to move, why don’t they get another job? Jobs are easier to come by than a home. I can’t imagine giving up my home because my job was moving.
I have put up twenty-nine Christmas trees in the bay window of the living room, each a little too tall. There are scars on the ceiling to prove it.
Behind the curtain of the window nearest my wife’s desk, there is a vertical strip of wall four inches wide that has missed the last four coats of paint so that the little pencil marks with dates opposite them would not be obliterated. If we moved, someone would certainly paint that patch and how would we ever know again how tall the twins were when they were four?
My son Brian has finished college and is working and no longer lives at home, but his marbles are in the bottom drawer of his dresser if he ever wants them.
There’s always been talk of moving. As many as ten times a year we talk about it. The talk was usually brought on by a leaky faucet, some peeling paint or a neighbor we didn’t like.
When you own a house you learn to live with its imperfections. You accommodate yourself to them and, like your own shortcomings, you find ways to ignore them.
Our house provides me with a simple pleasure every time I come home to it. I am welcomed by familiar things when I enter, and I’m warmed by some ambience that may merely be dust, but it is our dust and I like it. There are reverberations of the past everywhere, but it is not a sad place, because all the things left undone hold great hope for its future.
The talk of moving came up at dinner one night ten years ago. Brian was only half-listening, but at one point he looked up from his plate, gazed around the room and asked idly, “Why would we want to move away from home?”
When anyone asks me how much I think our house is worth, I just smile. They couldn’t buy what that house means to me for all the money in both local banks.
The house is not for sale.
Struck by the Christmas Lull
A strange lull sets in sometime during the afternoon of Christmas Day in our house.
The early-morning excitement is over, the tension is gone and dinner isn’t ready yet. One of our problems may be that we don’t have Christmas dinner until about six. We plan it for four but we have it at six.
The first evidence of any non-Christmas spirit usually comes about one o’clock. We’ve had a big, late breakfast that didn’t end until 9:30 or 10:00 and the dishes for that aren’t done until after we open our presents.
Washing the breakfast dishes runs into getting Christmas dinner. The first little flare-up comes when someone wanders into the kitchen and starts poking around looking for lunch. With dinner planned for four o’clock, there’s no lunch on the schedule. Margie’s busy trying to get the cranberry jelly out of the molds and she isn’t interested in serving lunch or having anyone get their own.To her, at this point, food means dirty dishes.
It isn’t easy to organize the meals over a Christmas weekend. Everyone is always complaining about eating too much one minute and out in the kitchen looking for food the next. We might be able to get away with just two meals if we had Christmas dinner at two. I forget why we don’t but we don’t.
We have thirteen people this year. The lull will strike them all but each will handle it differently.
A few will sit around the living room. Someone will decide to tidy up the place by putting all the wrapping paper and ribbons in a big, empty box that held a Christmas present a few hours earlier.
Struck by the Christmas Lull 173
The Rooney clan with friends, circa 1983; behind Marge (seated) are daughter Martha and son Brian (with moustache); to Andy’s left are daughters Ellen and Emily
I don’t do any of this because I love the mess. As soon as you clean