Today is the day!
Louis arrives today!
Somewhat tardy (he should have been here on Thursday, but Louis disdains precipitation), but with all the class of an iconic historic era, he shall finally enter my life.
And we will be happy together, for pretty much ever.
Let me backtrack about 45 years.
My mother got it into her head, 'round about her 20th year, that she wanted an Oriental Rug. Whether inspired by the Orientalists of a century earlier, or inspired by the magazine pages tucked into inspiration binders (newsflash: inspiration boards have always been a thing) for her interior design classes, I do not know. What I do know is that mom had a hankering for an Oriental Rug.
All you need is rugs.
Richly died and plushly woven wool with a pattern that echoes the history of centuries and whispers, "Luxury. Luxury. Luxury...". It was a completely impractical, highly over-priced, utterly ridiculous desire.
“Luxury. Luxury. Luxury...”
But, alas. Reason reared its ugly head. In the form of my grandfather. (This is in no way a judgement on Granddad, who was by no means an ugly person, but was, it must be said, frugal to a fault. He had that lived-through-the-Great-Depression-frugality that pulses in the veins of old women who stuff their mattresses and steal sugar packets from restaurants. But with a decided dignity because, at least in my family, we do not speak of hardship. We live through it.
Anyway, back to the story.)
Granddad informed my mother, firmly and with parental certainty, that an Oriental Rug is not an investment. It is a glorified floor-mat that you walk on, tracking dirt and shoe-grease and worldly woes across its exorbitantly overpriced surface until it is old and worn and tired.
So mom, the bright-eyed, beauty-loving Indiana-girl-turned-Athens-Georgia-co-ed, surrendered with filial grace and conceded.
No Oriental Rug.
Today, if you ask my mom about what she would have changed looking back on her life, this is her answer: She would have blown the cash and bought the Oriental Rug.
“If you ask my mom about what she would have changed, this is her answer: She would have blown the cash and bought the Oriental Rug.”
Flash forward to Christmas 2014. Mother, in her eternal and ever-constant nurturing of my soul and its appreciation of beauty, planned a girls outing for my last day in Atlanta.
And we went here:
The Restoration Hardware show room in Atlanta.
A sunset shot of Mecca for interior designers inside the Perimeter.
Be still, my beating heart.
This place is the stuff which dreams are made on. It's like a museum trip for the particularly acquisitive, because everything is still outrageously overpriced, but not like Post-Impressionist canvas overpriced. Like, "My Lord, they charge that much for a chair?!" overpriced.
And while we were there, I saw Louis. Or rather, met him.
Louis in Linen.
And then mom and I walked to Starbucks and looked at my finances and considered the quickly-approaching financial pitfalls in my life (new car, new computer, new phone, emergency stash of cash...).
And then we talked about an Oriental Rug.
And then we walked back to Restoration Hardware and I bought the damn chair.
Which brings us to today, 3 months of pre-natel expectation later.
Louis is coming.
I swore to myself I wouldn't name him until I saw him. Like an expectant mother dreaming up names for an as-yet-unmet child, I told myself it'd be bad luck to name him too soon. I mean, how could I even know if he was a boy or a girl - he hadn't even been custom-crafted yet!?
But I can't help it. He is a boy, and his name is Louis, and he is arriving today.
And I will love him forever.
Louis in his new habitat.