On Friday Tom and I traveled to our favorite sort of estate sale. Inside the house, a very old ranch, everything appeared as though Time stopped around 1965.

Love that.

The bedrooms were the 'mandatory' colors: one was turquoise, another, pink, and the other was that 40's shade of green. The bedroom furniture was from the 40's or 50's, the closet poles held 1960's clothes and there were even linens, still in packages, from the 50's and 60's.

I searched through boxes of books from the 1920's, the kitchen drawers held wood-handled utensils and cookbooks from the 40's. The appliances were old, for they made them to last back then, unlike today, where they're designed to fall apart so we must buy new ones.

Down in the huge basement? Boxes of aprons, tablecloths, glassware and Christmas decor. Also the old tub wringer washer we expect to see in such places and furniture long ago banished to the basement's depths. And a workbench and child's blackboard on an easel.

Tom and I have probably walked through 70 such houses here in NY, and this is our highest form of fun. I can imagine what it's like to live in one home for 50 or 60 years and almost can I hear the walls talk. I'm the type who can sense happy houses or seething ones and on Friday? I believe we walked through a happy one. Contented, also, since the family did not feel a need to buy the latest gadgets or redecorate with the decades (unlike me, who redecorates every ten minutes).

And you know? Probably most of us can sense the atmosphere of a home, which makes me want to keep mine as peaceful as possible. And since I believe the air of our home reflects the air of our hearts, it behooves me to keep things peaceful inside there, as well.

A dose of contentment wouldn't hurt, either.


*****

"Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.]"
John 14:26-28 (from the Amplified Bible)