Wall Words for People Like Us

If you are not living under a rock and decorating your house with moss and acorns, then you know that Wall Words are all the rage.

"BELIEVE," you are instructed in vinyl letters in a bold script above a bookshelf as you step inside the front door.
"Be kind, be silly, be honest" waltzes down the wall of the hallway.
"Create joy" says the sewing room.

If you automatically do everything you're told your whole life, like me, it can be a bit overwhelming.

I have been just a bit sniffy about wall words, mostly because when you have no talent for decorating or being up on the trends, you can kind of salve your ego by being lofty and superior.  "Well.  THAT will soon show up at garage sales next to the ceramic geese with blue bows."

But then someone gave me a wall plaque with SMUCKER in the background overlaid with "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," and I really liked it.  It is hanging in the kitchen.

I am considering buying some wall words, especially since someone is selling them as a fundraiser for a mutual friend.

So I have been going through the online catalog, and oh dear, I am getting sniffy again.

A lot of the words are about families.

They are beautiful words, in dreamy arrangements, balanced and flowing and artistic, in appropriate script.

And to me they seem to apply to dreamy, balanced, appropriate families.  Not to us.

"In this home we are family, we give hugs, we do love."

"The love of a family makes life beautiful."

"Family memories are treasured heirlooms."

Don't get me wrong.  We are a family, we love each other, but somehow we do not do dreamy and mushy and follow our example to get it right and wander arm-in-arm across the meadow picking daisies.

I give you, as an example, a bit of today's supper-dishes conversation:

Jenny: If you can't think of things to do at my funeral, quote this line from Walk Two Moons.  It's in the book at least twice.  You can alter it if you need to.  It's really sad: [soft mournful dramatic voice] "It can't be dead.  It was alive a minute ago."
Steven: I'll remember that.  I'll remember to call you an 'it.'
Jenny: I SAID you can CHANGE it to fit the OCCASION!!!


Maybe I need to design some wall words just for us.

In this home

we are family

(even those who lag behind so no one will think they belong)

We do snark.

We do glares.

we do hugs and hugs and HUGS until

we say GAAAAHHH!! Knock it off!  I'm feeling trapped!

We hijack facebook accounts

and send wacky texts on sisters' phones

and eavesdrop from the porch roof.

We interrupt

We yell

We tell how it ought to have been done

and how it really was

(not like THAT, believe me)

We dawdle.

We honk.

We go to church mad now and then.

We laugh a lot.

And in our own way

(flawed but uniquely us)

We do love.