I’m sitting in the upstairs bedroom, coffee in hand in the quiet of the morning pondering and praying for the day ahead. The murmured silence of the house enwraps me in a comfortable blanket.

I look around the room, eyes landing on different items. Echoes of days past, the memory around each one, resonates within.

The Adirondack area rug with bears and pines and patterns that Karen and I labored to place under all the furniture back in 2018. And along one side, the matching bedroom dressers once used by our kids and then ourselves when we shuffled bedrooms. On the visible hardwood floor in front of them, I see the faint markings of long-gone tape which marked the loudest squeaks in the floor from decades ago.

To the right, the mirrored closet doors which Karen had really wanted. I secretly installed them to surprised her when she went away one weekend back in 2004. A trail of rose petals along the floor, a bouquet of flowers and my proposal to renew our marriage vows took place next to those doors (she said yes). Now reflected in those mirrors the beautiful quilt on our bed with its embroidered flowers, a gift from Karen’s parents back in 2016.

The ceiling light and fan above catches my eye. That’s from a decade ago when I ran electric wires from the attic so she could have separate fan and light switches.

A sigh escapes as I see the huge ‘dancing bears’ picture on the opposite wall framed by Karen in the mid-2010’s. She learned how to cover a wood frame with birch bark and branches from her dad, using bark pieces she collected when we hiked the Adirondack mountains.

And then to the right, subtle reflections from atop my bookcase, two ornamental green glass vases with crystals hanging from their side swaying slightly. Karen inherited them from her great grand-mother Alice Thomas, who brought them from Wales in the late 1880’s. Sitting between them is a single cut glass vase of roses (yes, amazingly still in full bloom😉) from the 2004 renewal of our marriage vows.

A small mosaic cut glass picture of two birds reflects the morning light from Karen’s dresser. I picked it up while in Brazil on business in the 2000’s, and it reminds me of those years traveling across the world.

Oh, and next to it, a hand-formed ceramic vase, holding dried thistles from the 1970s which Karen collected from a field on one of our first dates.

Such memories fill me! I turn forwards the growing light from the outside windows and see the old hardwood bookcase we received from my parents’ house when they passed away a decade ago. I grew up with that bookcase in our Cazenovia, NY home, where it sat tucked against a wall in the living room, the books long embedded there.

My mind drifts back to the first house I lived in on Pompey Center Road, NY.  I remember the warm comfort and safety I felt reading many books in an old, padded wicker rocker on our porch. Dad had built it on a front corner of the house slightly isolated from the main rooms, a wonderful sanctuary where I lost myself in the world of books.

Faint noises in the kitchen downstairs bring me to the present, and I ease back in wonder into the beautiful hardwood chair Karen rescued a few years ago from the curb. What is it about these memories that is so warm, so rich that they are embedded in the things that surround me now? That they widen and deepen places in my soul?

I think it’s seeing the creations from the gifts and skills passed down by my father and my mother, and Karen’s. For the beauty, by our hand or others, inherent in the objects connected to the memories. For the imprinting into objects the warm, deepening experiences that have helped form my life.

The objects remind me of the skills I learned to create paintings, install doors, run electric, and rearrange furniture. I think of the capabilities my parents passed on to create and appreciate the material items around me.  They are the footprints of life – the padded rocker, the parents’ bookcase, the vase of roses, the paintings, the birch bark frames, and more.

I realize the feeling that underlies these footprints, the word that describes it best, is gratitude.

Gratitude grounded in the years that Karen and I have each traveled, years we’ve stayed intentional invested in life as best we could. The roads we’ve traveled leaves me with deep gratitude to God and Karen, and warm gratefulness for my daughters and close friends.

I wish for everyone that the items that surround them in their lives might hold life-affirming memories from the years past that reflect the goodness and love of God and others.