Room by Room
Our youngest left for college in August. I cried for two weeks and then, one rainy Tuesday, I went into the guest room and started moving furniture. I was not prepared for how good it felt.
The room had everything a guest room needs and nothing a person actually wants to be in: a bed with a brass headboard, a nightstand, a dresser, a ceiling light, beige walls. Functional. Forgettable. I'd walked past it for two years without thinking about it as a room that could become something.
I started with the lighting. The ceiling fixture was replaced with a simple pendant light on a dimmer — something with a natural linen shade that would throw soft ambient light without dominating. Then I added a wall sconce beside the reading chair: swing-arm, adjustable, aimed to come over the left shoulder while sitting.
The chair came from an antique shop in downtown Asheville — a wide linen-covered armchair with slightly splayed legs that looks like it belongs in a country house library. I paired it with a small round stool for my feet, a side table barely large enough for a tea cup and a book, and a wool blanket folded over the arm.
I kept the bed — a daybed now, covered in linen, looking more like a deep sofa when made up — because guests do still come occasionally. But the room is designed around the chair. Around the reading that happens in it three or four evenings a week, quietly, sometimes for just twenty minutes and sometimes for hours.
Empty nesting gave me back this room. I don't take it for granted. Every time I sit down in that chair with the sconce on low and the mountain fog visible through the window, I think about how close I came to leaving it as a guest room with nowhere to go.