Ode To A Carpeted Basement

I had no idea, no idea the the act of laying carpeting in your rooms would vault you from the realms of dreams, into mundane reality. Truly, how could I know? I mean, intellectually I knew that once carpeted we could begin the trickle down of our upstairs life down into the newly formed rooms, but I didn't really know.

We had you framed, your bones showing the basement that you would become... and you retained every bit of imaginary beauty and promise. Then as you lay fallow but for the stringing of electrical and networking tendons, that year or so you never lost your magic. As we slowly, over the years purchased lights and hardware for you, made decisions, and imagined how you would be... still you eluded us in you un-being. The sheet rock and texture gave you a sculptural quality; an almost third dimensional, but still ghost like reality. The finish carpentry delineated you even more, but honestly... you were still in an untouchable, state of non-existence to me! Paint? No, not even close.

Just one afternoon of two men laying a horizontal textured surface, and my lists of all the thing to be done before you would become, has become a list of inconsequentials. A list of nit-pickery nothings.

As I walked down your now padded and carpeted stairs and entered your rooms.... ROOMS! I was shocked to my core that all of the dreams and maybes of your creation had been made reality, and that they had indeed been ripped out of the ether and made into rooms. Empty rooms smelling of paint and new carpeting; They had become rooms, complete and finite. Rooms like every empty room of every new apartment or house that I have ever moved into.

The dreams that had been forming over the years of your planning and creation are now locked in place, like a butterfly caught and displayed in solid lucite.

Don't get me wrong, your empty rooms waiting to be filled and lived in are exciting to me in their own way... the flow of our family life will be forever changed with these additions. But the state of un-being and anticipation is gone now, and I can see how home improvement can be an addiction. The thrill of the chase is over.

It has been ever since Monday, and I still cannot bear to take your picture. You seem naked to me. Now that you ARE and have being, your emptiness seems to need covering, filling, living before I expose you.

Love
-bon

To the Internets: Perhaps this Sunday I will be able to give y'all that promised tour.