House Beautiful

I expected Martha Stewart or House Beautiful

when we arrived for the holiday piano recital,

home of a student's family.

I imagined Victorian elegance:

gleaming dark wood, evergreen swags

draping stair banister, plush

rugs, and everything just so.

We knocked and were welcomed into

Regular Life:

small home, bustling with crowd,

old-fashioned kitchen,

plain wood paneled living-

room, two simple poinsettias

smiling on the piano.

Nothing was perfect, nothing

just so as

we sat cramped in miscellaneous

chairs behind the piano

listening to our children

perfom. Later, cookies and bars

in the kitchen, sipping hot

Swedish glogg while

kids raced and played.

I relaxed, laughing,

warming from a deep freeze.

I met neighbors who'd come by

to help the host,

heard about their closeness,

neighbors who visited and shared

on this city street.

I felt the love in that place,

pined for that kind of life,

marveled at how I'd been fooled

into thinking Martha Stewart

or House Beautiful was something

Real, something

I should even

want.

[Copyright 2002, Theresa Jarosz Alberti; do not reproduce without permission]