Preacher's wives should know how to move easily

It's true, many United Methodist minister's wives know to expect a move about every five or six years. It often was heartbreaking, even though the next place had better facilities and more members. But that didn't make up for the good friends we'd made in the past few years. But I didn't think that after Lester retired we would have to move anymore. I thought that now that we were on my family's home place and had our own house that I was through with moving.

Well, I am moving. Lester is not. No. We aren't having troubles, not any more than we've had for 67 years anyway. I am moving my office. Some of you may remember me telling you about a different place I had my office in this house.

First I had a space in our bedroom, but that didn't work very well. It was OK while I had an official office at my jobs in town. You know the kind, with file drawers, telephones, and even people who called me "boss" even though I didn't want them to. But when that type of job wasn't for me anymore, I needed to develop a bona fide office to take care of details like deadlines, books sold, books requested, etc., at home.

So we turned part of our entrance area into my office. I loved it because I could see in each direction. Well, actually, I couldn't see to the west except by reflection in the southern windows. I could watch the geese on the pond, the birds everywhere, likewise the squirrels and the outside cats. It only had one drawback. All the glass and windows made it get pretty cold (or pretty hot). I bundled up and didn't mind it, but when we inherited some of Ellen's fine furniture that had been our Aunt Lyle's years ago; we needed to make some changes.

I could have resisted getting this chance, but I remembered so well when Ellen and I went with our Aunt Gladys, who was her sister's executor, to look at all these beautiful pieces in Aunt Lyle's home in Norman, Okla. A used furniture store owner was only offering a pittance for the house full. So Gladys said if we would pay for the transportation we could divide the pieces. Our families were still young and had been using whatever we could get to furnish our houses.

Following Ellen's death, her three children took what they wanted and our family went over to get whatever else we might want before they gave it to a charity. Among the things was a secretary desk. I think that's what they call them. The desk part folds up so it can be used in the living room with all your private business hiding behind the closed desk. I knew Aunt Lyle would want it to stay in the family. So here we are. It has had hard usage as a desk for a growing boy and then as a supplementary working space for Ellen's "Loom Room" where she wove old fashioned rag rugs on an old fashioned loom.

There wasn't any place to put it in my existing office so we knew we had to make a major change and bring part of my office into the living room. In the age of computers and copying machines, this desk does not work too well. But this goes so well with my mother's china cabinet and all her dishes that I never use, but I love to look at. It also goes well with two other pieces of Aunt Lyle's furniture that she willed to Lester and me.

So we move the laptop computer onto a small black table nestled up against "the" desk, and the printer is on another little folding table behind the lounge chair we bought when Lester broke his leg and it had to be elevated.

I brought my desk chair in from the old office and when I am not using it at the computer I turn it around to be an extra living room chair. It's odd how often it is chosen over all the other plushy chairs we have. The 20 years of accumulated "stuff" from United Methodist Women, from my years of being a Road Scholar instructor, from the current organizations I'm in, and from dozens of each of the 29 children, grandchildren, greats and great-great grandchildren, children in-law and a few cats, dogs, horses and cars is still in the former office awaiting new placements

I know we won't win any decorator prizes, but I feel that we have enough memories in our stuff to keep us warm and happy for the rest of our years. Then someone else can worry about what to do with it all.

P.S. I can still look at the pond, the road, the driveway to the Wayside, the wheat field, and the natural life.