The Empty Room

There is an empty room in my house.

When I bought the house, I called it the nursery. When I talked about it out-loud, I added "someday" but it my head it was always just "the nursery".

It's a tiny room, full of light in the afternoon, dim and cozy in the mornings. The natural place for a crib is right against the shared wall with one in my bedroom. My headboard and my child's crib will be right together, with a wall between us. 

As time passed and I was not pregnant, we renovated the room that is now our bedroom. Replacing the old horsehair plaster and lathe with insulation and dry wall. Welcome to the modern age, house! The room was completed the weekend of our 5th wedding anniversary- the weekend we conceived Blue Sunday.

In the 2 week wait, we starting doing over our office/ gym. By "doing over" I mean completely ripping out, right down to the studs. More plaster and lathe, more new drywall and insulation. When I found out we were pregnant, I panicked. We had the gym/ office partially torn out, it would take a few months of weekends to complete and we had to do the same thing to the nursery! I made a detailed week by week plan of the upstairs re-model. The nursery would begin the weekend after a 2 week holiday break- Jan 6th 2012. That day ended up being 2 days after the termination.

The office/ gym were completed according to the time line- but the nursery stood empty. We started calling it the Cats' Room. It had been the nursery the 13 months before the termination to me, but after saying "This is the Nursery" to our visitors for 19 weeks with a real baby growing inside me- it no longer felt appropriate. The cats' litter boxes, food bowls and scratching post took up the un-renovated, abandoned space. We put a chain on the door, ostensibly to keep our dog out of the cats' food, but possibly to keep ourselves from seeing that empty room and being reminded of my empty womb (as if we ever, ever forgot).

With the start of this new year, a whole year without Blue Sunday, we've started moving forward with a RE, hoping to get a baby sooner rather than later. Though hub took some convincing, we've started moving forward with the renovation of the Cats' Room too. Now we don't know what to call it. It isn't the cats' room (now all their things are in the office yuck). But it isn't a nursery, and I can't shake the idea thAt it might not be. Either because we never get a baby, of because we get two at once.

While tearing out the plaster, I found this in the wall- the wall of a house built 65 years ago-and I couldn't help but laugh. 

Dr. Robinson's Rubber Prophylactics Sold for the prevention of diseases... and keeping Lizzy childless?

 

 

 

 

An ancient condom tin, complete with (broken) condom. Don't know what happened to the other 2.

There are piles of lathe in the room, waiting for the last of the snow to melt so we can have a fire; there is some rubble in there as well, also waiting for the snow to melt so that we can put it in the Baggster currently covered with snow in the side yard; but there is no longer a condom in the walls.

There is still a chain on the door... of the small room.

And isn't it ironic...don't you think
A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think...
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures
Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out Alanis Morissette, Ironic