The Heart of our Home May be in our Bathroom

    This afternoon my husband asked me to stand by while he pulled the cord on a gasoline powered chain saw that looked like it belonged to the world of Mad Max, that apocalyptic movie full of machines and dust, prized in a wasteland of rust and sharp edges.   I eyed my beloved sixty-eight year old husband with silver hair and a Santa Clause beard as he bent over and began to slice up the giant trees we felled a few months ago as we pruned the vegetation that seeks to consume us in the woods here in Maine.  I held a cup of warm tea to shield against the 34 degree weather. And watched slightly breathlessly.  911 was on speed dial in my pocket.  Twenty minutes later I held an empty cup and a happy heart.  My lumber-jack husband had successfully sawed three fifteen-foot trees into variously-sized stumps.  All without carnage or blood.  Or an ambulance.  My Mad Max vigilance tucked herself away for another day when my husband might want to scale a thirty foot ladder and inspect the roof.  

    With lungs open wide to the chilly, saw-dusty air that tickled my nose, I surveyed the transformation, tipping my head to capture a sweet whisper over by the wood pile.  It was a heart-shaped stump.  I approached the log and ran my hand over the prickly surface of the gift that made me smile.  I yelled out to my husband, "Hey level that off on the bottom for me and I'll finish up the top and make it into a tub-side little table for the bathroom."  

    I am nearing the end of a tiring 10-month process of putting our downstairs bathroom back together after the pipes burst and soaked the walls, the molding, the vanity and the floor.  It took five months to pick out the flooring. The flooring that was recently installed incorrectly and on standby for repair.  I mused obsessively for at least six months about the new vanity's size, color, placement.  Do I pick an old chest and refinish it?  Have something custom built?  Pick a freestanding one with little feet?  A 60 inch white vanity with six legs eventually won and now sits in the middle of the bathroom without a top, unattached to the wall, sinkless.  We are awaiting the electrician, the plumber, the carpenter, and the painter to all finish up after the floor guy rips up the floor and installs the sensors he forgot.  

    Now, commit to painting the tub! I harass myself. The antique claw-foot tub my husband hauled from Michigan 30 years ago.  It's currently old-people blue, shades of my husband's former life and wife who used to live here.  We settled on keeping only that one piece from before the snow and water, wind and below-zero temps that claimed the original bathroom during a February Nor-Easter. I wonder if I should paint it a dramatic black?  Or boring white.  How about orange!  

    This morning as I gazed into my construction-zone bathroom without a door, I felt at peace with the clean spa-looking feel.  Updated farmhouse zen I call it.  No more red tile flooring and grey/blue clawfoot tub or vanity without drawers.  As construction comes to a close I am searching for found or handmade items.  One-of-a-kind.  Like the antique ladders my husband put up over the outdoor bar he built and above the couch he designed and constructed that sits on our back porch. I want our bathroom to be just for us in the way my swing bed that my husband built for me moves back and forth with grace on our side porch.  The place where I dream and wonder at the greenery surrounding me in the spring and all summer.  I will ponder that heavy tub as I debate making our bathroom light fixture out of a piece of reclaimed wood from somewhere around our home or maybe I'll use an exotic piece from another land. Or I could buy that fake antique brass one from France on E-Bay?  

    But it took no time yesterday afternoon to know that the heart stump who reached for me needs to come inside and stand tubside.  A heart cut from the middle section of a maple tree that once stood sturdy and strong outside my front door.  With a little bit of attention in the workshop, she will perch securely on three legs forever more next to my cast-iron bathtub with it's talon feet.  The forest that protects us from the wind, grand trees who flame into wild color in the fall and then stand still and well-rooted as the weather turns bitter.  I am bringing that, which was offered so freely, inside.  

    The heart of some homes is the kitchen but it's looking like ours will most likely be in the bathroom.  A bathroom that will remind me of so much and all that matters as I soon settle into my first bath in a year.