Tomorrow is Halfway Day. It’s fine. I’m fine.
I’d like to ask 2019 what happened, but it’s only half there right now. Best to just leave it alone. It had a good solid beginning. It had good bones. Good bones. I’m sure the second half will be equally as memorable.
I’ve gone six months without regaling you with a Mom story - something she would’ve pinned to the company towels in the bathroom where her family would read it. And remember it. That might not seem long to you, but after accomplishing it every single day last year, these last six months I’ve felt like a slacker.
I kinda miss chatting with you all about her. So, in honor of Halfway Day, I feel a story coming on.....
Why do we use the term “good bones” to describe something sturdy? Mom did it a lot. Back in our early college days, she gave my husband and I a duo of chairs that had belonged to her mother, saying “the baby-blue crushed-velvet upholstery isn’t what you’d want, but these chairs have good bones.”
Of course, chairs don’t have bones. Sounds like something from a Stephen King novel. Right? But, sure enough, when my husband and I took those chairs to an upholstery class, we found out that after removing four, count ‘em, four layers of fabric corresponding to the fashion of the last four decades, those chairs actually had the best of bones. Their foundations were sturdy and worth re-upholstering for the fifth time.
As the years have passed, our amateur upholstery job needed replacement, so we took them to a professional upholsterer, who said the same thing as my mother and our upholstery teacher—the chairs still had good bones.
Those same chairs, in their sixth transformation, still inhabit our living room, a room we are preparing to update. And the question will be asked, “Do the chairs stay?” And you know I will hear my mother’s voice saying “They’ve got good bones. Give them an update, or pass them down to someone who needs a place to rest their keister.”
The thing is, Mom didn’t only use that phrase when discussing furniture. She said it about all kinds of structures: houses, barns, clothing, horses, and people. She used the term to mean the design or the foundation of the structure was solid.
The ironic thing about it was that my mother had the BEST of bones when it came to a solid foundation. But her actual bones were so riddled by osteoporosis that she could break one simply by rolling over in bed the wrong way. Her actual bones were not so “good.”
So, here’s a question for you. How will you describe the “bones” of your second half of 2019 when December rolls around and you look back to review? Will the structure have been solid enough to support all that had to be lived?
They say the best way to strengthen human bone is weight-bearing exercise. Maybe that’s true for structures, too. Heaven knows, those old chairs have upheld hundreds of weighty humans. They could compete in the Olympics for all the strength training they’ve done.
How about time? It’s the same, really. All that heavy lifting you’ve done in the past? All those troubles and worries and burdens that were so heavy to bear? They’ve made you stronger. Better capable to endure the weight of what may come. That means that on this Halfway Day, your first half of 2019 pumped you up so that you can power through the second half. I know you can, because you, my dears, have got good bones.
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