A Stinky Hippie on my Supple Sofa

Herb the stinky hippie sat on my supple, Italian leather sofa, testing it out while he thoughtfully pondered buying it. As he reclined, he revealed the source of his pungency. The stains on his shirt's armpits proved that he was too pure to bow to many pretentious social conventions, conventions like deodorant, (but he did have 1800 dollars cash, which was why he had been invited inside my home). Now don't get me wrong. I would love to save the planet, and I own second hand furniture and a herb and vegetable garden to prove it; but I would rather be poisoned by the aluminum in my deodorant than alienate everyone I do know and everyone I might ever want to meet. I wish I could sugar-coat the truth better, but there is simply no other way to describe the smell of dear old Herb than to say that he reeked to high heaven with unadulterated body odor.

The sofa on which Herb reclined, had been more than a sofa to me. It was a chocolate-brown, soft, leather symbol of Greg's and my independence and comfort. It was the first brand-new set of furniture that we bought when we moved into our very own house. Our tax return one year had facilitated the purchase of my prize possession, fashioned from Natuzzi leather, at once both cozy and costly. This fantastic set of sofas was not just beautiful, it was even practical, having survived reflux in three Mizell infants unscathed. In my mind, the addition of that sofa transformed my living room from a large living space to a warm and inviting haven, and I loved that sofa both for its comfort and for its meaning.

When Greg and I pondered our move to Oz, it was impossible to make the decision without counting the cost. Shipping everything we owned was not a financial possibility, because shipping something as large as that set of sofas to Australia (and then back when we moved again) would require paying for it twice. Even storing it would cost more than buying it all again in both places. When we had finally made the decision that we would chase new dreams abroad in Oz, I cried as the realization that we would have to sell that sofa set dropped on me like a ton of bricks. Those tears shined a spotlight on my heart, revealing the over-valuing of my possessions, namely the Natuzzi sofa set, which had been flourishing within me for several years.

Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying something that is beautiful. I believe that beauty is quite simply a gift from God. There is no problem with making my home a warm and inviting place that is comfortable and lovely for our family and for visitors; and in fact making my home a loving and pleasant place to be is very important to me. But, loving furniture so much that its potential sale brings me to tears is just plain wrong. Affection toward sofas is at best misdirected, and at worst materialism. Even this morning I was talking to my daughter about how loving things crowds out the love for God and others in our hearts. Materialism is ugly in a six-year-old and terrifying in a grown woman like me. My sofa was the symbol of pride in possessions to me, and it took moving overseas for me to see truth.

Herb was, no doubt, the beneficiary of my hard lesson. He was looking for a sofa for his new holiday home in New Mexico, and he needed something nice--something like my leather sofa set. Herb was wealthy, friendly, and honest, and I am glad to have met him. (Herb eventually bought the sofa for 1700 dollars. I would have sold it to him for 100 more, but Greg felt sorry that he had to deal with such a merciless swindler as me, and so Greg gave him a discount.) Sure he stunk terribly and used our bathroom with the door open, but God had a higher purpose in bringing him into my life than just our (and your) entertainment. As my symbolic sofa bounced down the road, destined for a new life in a new state, tears gathered in my eyes again. The experience of selling my sofa to Herb was the scalpel that sliced away my sofa and thus separated me from a thick layer of my own materialism.

It's funny how my life turns out. We started over in Australia almost ten months ago, with a shipment of about 10% of what had been our possessions--no furniture. On a tiny budget, we bought a whole new set of used furniture for our house from eBay and Craigslist. We even bought a used Natuzzi sofa. Just like the last one, it is comfortable and it makes our living room warm and inviting, but I hope this time, that I will be able to appreciate the couch without turning it into an idol.

Through the sale of my first sofa to Herb, I learned (and am still learning) that the beauty of my home does not depend on owning a fine sofa. My home is not a physical location; my home is an idea, a concept that moves where my family moves. Home is built (or torn down) by my own hands and my own heart toward my little girls and my husband. My security is not found in the springs and timber, in the stuffing and leather of possessions that make me more comfortable. My security and my hope is in God, who apparently had to move me overseas so that my love for Him and for others could become more pure, unhindered, or maybe hindered less, by the idol of materialism represented by my supple sofa.

I am sad to say that I have no pictures of the first sofa or of Herb who now owns it. This is a picture of the sofa that we bought in Sydney with my oldest and youngest little girls enjoying it.

Worms and the Shameless Fairy Princess

"I may have worms in my bottom," Meryl said as she looked deeply into the shocked eyes of her mild-mannered, originally South African Prep (Kindergarten) teacher. (The phrase was pronounced "Aye my hev wums een moy bo-tome," for my American friends who haven't heard Meryl's beautifully perfect Australian accent recently) In our parent-teacher-student conferences, we had already discussed strengths and were moving on to areas in her life that need attention or improvement. Meryl had been working on concentration and focus and needed to give her teacher serious hope that her habitual imaginative distraction was not her fault, so she articulated what she had gathered by eaves-dropping on a recent conversation between Greg and I. I recommended to Greg that we de-worm her as a last hope of tying her imagination to reality enough for her to get herself dressed, fed, and shod in the morning, with reasonably fresh breath, on a really fantastically focused morning.

The honesty and shamelessness with which Meryl shocked me are the norm here. My friends relate many facts of motherhood in conversation without any of the extra meaning, that is, modesty or shame, that might be assigned to the same topics in Texas. For instance, recently when my kids had lice, I felt compelled to let the other mums know, since Meryl is quite affectionate, and probably shared the city of critters on her head with many of her friends as she smothered them with love and cuddles. I was so torn about telling the mums, because in Texas, lice means something negative about your kid, your parenting, and your family's hygiene, and maybe even your family's social status. Whether I am in Texas or in a foreign country, I would rather risk loss than break a principle in which I believe. In the end, my honesty won out over my fear of losing friends, and I told my new friends about the civilization under siege at our house.

I needn't have worried. As soon as I told my shameful secret, the other mums kindly and reassuringly stepped closer and began to commiserate. They told me all about their battles with lice and when their kids had it, and how to beat it with or without chemicals. They were like generals in a war on a covert enemy, planning surprise attacks, and sharing strategies and intelligence. They also preemptively warned me about thread worms (pin worms), how they affect concentration and sleep, and how to get rid of them; because here in Oz, having lice means you have bugs in your hair, having threadworms means there are worms in your "bum"; and poetry and music seem to own the exclusive copyrights on extra meaning. Simplicity in communication is beautiful to live.

I love Aussie honesty and straightforwardness, and when it stares me down through the thick lashes and deep, pensive, black eyes of my middle, most sensitive girl, I realize how very far away I am from what had been home, and how glad and torn I feel about living here. I am happy for my girls to lose shame as a cultural norm, but not quite ready for their only tie to my homeland to be me. Slowly but surely, my children are ceasing to be Americans in their thinking and manner and are beginning to be Aussies. The process is startling and intriguing to watch, and my conflicted feelings of joy and loss about their transformation give me insight into what my father must have experienced as he watched Jonathan and I grow up, children of a different culture in a new homeland. We were Indian flavored Americans, and I believe that my children are becoming American flavored Aussies.

Dust is settling now as Meryl's sixth birthday has passed us for the first and last time. At six, Meryl, the Fairy Princess, is thoughtful and sensitive and deep. She asks hard questions about faith and God and life. She has introduced the concept of romance to her prep class and has three boys that want to marry her at school, although I suspect that she is stringing them along as a sort of living collection. (At home she says she "could only marry Colby," her best friend from Texas.) She over-uses superlatives (like her mother), and the words "I" and "never" (again-- familiar). She is beautiful, but learning that true beauty is developed on the inside as kindness. She is a born story-teller, and her imagination takes her to places that only exist in the magic of her mind, places that less sensitive souls would call lies. She is unique and ethereal and happy, full of dreams and usually covered in glitter and lip gloss.

I hope Greg and I will be able to train and encourage and protect her for whatever destiny God holds for her. I hope we will be able to live out and thus teach her Christian values like redemption, sacrifice, and truth, and American values like rugged independence, to add to the cultural beauty of collaboration and community trust that I find so refreshing here in Oz. I know that one day she will clothe herself and brush her own teeth, and when she does, she will know the truth about the tooth fairy and Father Christmas. When she outgrows old dreams, I hope her creativity produces new sorts of big dreams keep her company on her journey. We may not always live in Australia; she may end up an American, an Australian, an Ameristralian, or an Auserican. Whatever her eventual nationality, I hope that the gorgeous Australian fragrance of honesty and shamelessness, the one that made her confess the perceived source of her distraction to her teacher, will hang about thoughtful, sensitive, imaginative Meryl, wherever she goes.