Curating the Casa

Today is the one-year mark of our renovation efforts. On March 14, 2008, we got our first dumpster and started filling it with stuff. Well, crap, actually. The stuff we kept. When we took all the remaining art down on August 23, I looked around the room and felt incredibly glum. Thank goodness I could still amuse my eyes by looking at our view.

The art started coming back on the walls on February 7, 2009, because we needed to get the pictures off the floor as part of preparing for carpeting.

I got to reconnect with our precious family heirlooms, including a tapa cloth. My mom explains that my father hand carried this primitive paper-like bark fabric home from Fiji to Austria after getting his MBA in the United States and treating himself to a trip around the world—instead of flying east, he flew west. It now hangs in our bedroom, so I can see it every day.

With each image I unwrapped, I told Matt the tale of how this treasure came to be part of our collection. Remember Annapolis, New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco, Savanna, Music Fest with Karen and George?

Matt asked what I wanted to do on my birthday—within the context of preparing the house for a visit by Frank and Diana. I wished to get some more of our stuff back. And so on March 7, we headed to the storage unit. My collection of stemware returned to its home in the glass IKEA cabinet I purchased years ago with birthday bucks from my mother-in-law, Jean.


“Bertha” also made it home. And I had found a hand-typed postcard from Matt’s Aunt Jennie, who wrote, “It seems incredible that my ancient icebox which you found in my basement could look so good and become so useful.” (It stores booze.)


And we finally got to hang our key cabinet by the yellow front door, an Uncle Joe Brooks original. It coordinates perfectly with a favorite Don Davis painting. And back above the dining table went my three hand-carved angels. Oma Langer gave my mom the dark angel when I was born. She explains, “It was carved by the son of the old Heissl family who were Imperial (Kaiserlich-königliche Holzschnitzer) woodcarvers to Kaiser Franz Josef.” His heirs carved the other two angels, gifts from Oma to Mom upon the birth of my brothers.

Unwrapping all the carefully packed items was very much like being a very lucky kid at her birthday party.