text: Your Room Is Ready . . . Janis was arriving on a plane at 4:00, and she needed a safe spot in which to recover. So Meredith woke up with just one clear thought in her mind that morning, I’ve run out of time and I’ve run out of excuses. I have to clean the guest room - NOW! She got out of bed, slipped into her Mom jeans and a tee shirt, and went right to the guestroom. She stripped the sheets off the bed and put them in the washer. Then she went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Carrying her coffee mug back to the guest room, she sank into a comfortable chair. Where do I begin...? s he thought as she surveyed what had once been a very pretty room. But, like all rooms that fall into disuse, this one had become a catch-all for stuff. Suitcases that weren’t put away between trips, boxes of Christmas ornaments and an artificial tree, miscellaneous things that had been designated for a hypothetical garage sale that would happen sometime, outgrown children’s clothes, and sporting equipment covered most of the floor space. She could just barely see the pretty woven rug she had shopped for, for months. Declutter first ! Meredith decided and made alternate trips to the garage and trash can as she redistributed everything that didn’t belong in the guestroom. Huffing and puffing, she poured another cup of coffee and returned to the guest room chair. With a wry smile, she let the trite but true phrase cross her mind; Oh yeah, if these walls could talk . It was once one of the busiest rooms in the house. Memories of what she thought of as her one-night-stand era came up first. From the time she divorced Phil’s father when he was 10, until he left for college at 18, Meredith did very little dating. But once her son was no longer even in the same State, she slowly entered the dating pool. After she knew a guy for a while, she sometimes invited him to come home with her for the night, but she always took him to this room - the guest room - reminding them both that he was just a guest. There were no plans to be made for a long-term relationship. Funny, she could only remember a few of their names, but she remembered other things. There were a few less-than-sterling choices, but for the most part, they had been nice men, who weren’t any more interested in making a commitment than she was and that system worked well for her - until she met Jim and brought him home to her bedroom - for good. Armed with a mop, her vacuum, and cleaning supplies, she tackled the job of removing dust and grime, accumulated over years, and while she cleaned, she remembered other times the guest room had been in full use. Her Aunt Jill and Uncle Ed came down from Vermont to stay for a number of years from late November until May, and they took over a big part of her home and her life. It was glorious. In those years, Meredith was working in Real Estate Sales, determined to earn as much money as she could to pay for Phil’s first year of college. When she and Phil were alone, she juggled housekeeping and his extracurricular activities along with her work, but while Jill and Ed were there, they shopped, cooked, cleaned, and chauffeured Phil wherever he needed to be, leaving Meredith free to do whatever she needed to do. And whatever time she came home from work, they greeted her, brought her up to speed on that day's activities, and fed her a hot and delicious meal. They loved being in the warm weather with family for the winter and she loved having them. They were both gone now - but she had enough good, really good memories of them to last her, and Phil, a lifetime. Then there was the time when Janey and her mother came to spend a week with Phil and Meredith. . Before coming to Florida, Meredith and Phil’s father lived in Vermont in a duplex. Janey was “the girl next door.” Phil was three, and Janey was five, and they fell madly in love. He even proposed marriage to her and Janey’s Mother and Meredith began to call each other “mother-in-law.” The children never stopped talking about each other and so when Janey turned 12, her mother and Meredith planned a visit. They expected the two older children to renew what had been a magical childhood relationship. But so much for maternal expectations. Both mothers had failed to calculate the difference in energies between a 3 and 5-year-old boy and girl and a ten-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. They totally disliked each other. Janey told her Mother that Phil was just “wicked weird,” and Phil confided in Meredith that he suspected that Janey had “terminal cooties.” They argued over restaurants, movies, TV shows, and games they did and didn’t want to play for six days, but the mothers had managed to ignore most of it and in the end, agreed that it had been a memorable mistake that turned out for them to be surprisingly entertaining. And in the line-up of interesting guests, she certainly couldn’t forget her cousin Sandy from Boston and her husband, Randy. Sandy and Randy were as whacky as their names and filled with boundless energy. Despite dire warnings from Meredith, Randy insisted that they all drive 250 miles to Orlando to go to SeaWorld, on a day that a hurricane was making its way north in the Atlantic. “SeaWorld is miles from the coast,” Randy scoffed as they drove directly east, into the outer bands of the massive storm. Shortly after they paid their entrance fee, the staff began closing down the outdoor exhibits one by one to protect the animals. They did attend a few indoor shows and spent some time in the gift shops, but after two hours, they were politely invited to leave the attraction, soaking wet, without seeing a single killer whale. They salvaged the day, though, by stopping on the way home at the Medieval Times Restaurant, which featured lavish shows of jousting and sword fighting and falconry and dinner served with no silverware to allow for eating with your fingers. They were a fun couple, and Meredith could never even hear their names without smiling. Meredith put her cleaning tools away and poured a cold drink. Then she began to plan the little “extra’s” that would make her friend’s stay as comfortable as possible. She gathered the latest magazines and a couple of trashy paperback novels for diversion. She made up a basket of comfort items - toothbrush, toothpaste, hand lotion, nail file, hand sanitizer, make-up remover, pain killers, Kleenex, etc., in case Janis forgot to pack any of those things. Then she turned the TV on to make sure it worked, put the remote in the drawer of the bedside table, and began to make the bed. And her thoughts turned to the last guest to use the guestroom. It was Jim’s sister Irene, who flew in from England for their wedding and to serve as Meredith’s maid-of-honor. At the wedding, Edith met Jim’s business partner Roger, who was also Jim’s best man. Focused on their own wedding, neither Meredith nor Jim noticed the instant attraction that struck Edith and Roger like a proverbial thunderbolt and so they were stunned to return from their honeymoon to find a legal folder on the guestroom bed turning full ownership of Jim’s partnership over to him and a note saying that they had discovered they couldn’t live without each other and didn’t want to. They had flown to Vegas to get married and were on their way to England to live. It had been five years since then. Edith and Roger had visited twice but chose to stay in a hotel. They had one child and another was on the way. The ultimate happy ending , Marilyn mused as she stood in the doorway of the room, a can of air freshener in her hand, and surveyed her day’s work. The room sparkled. A lush green plant in a handsome Chinese bowl stood in the area of the room designated to draw health and well-being to that space, according to the laws of feng shui. The beautiful white islet duvet and shams, plus a mound of lush pillows made the bed worthy of a page in House Beautiful, and Meredith still just loved (and knew she always would) the large watercolor painting of a field of daisies that hung above the headboard. It was a gift to her from one of the “one-night-stands” - a young, unknown artist at the time, whose paintings now hung in major museums across the country and in his lavish gallery in New York. She had mirrored the painting on the dresser directly across from it with her grandmother’s milk glass vase filled with real daisies that she had remembered to pick up on her way home from work the night before. The final effect was beautiful. “Take care of this next lady, please,” Meredith said out loud to the room at large. “Janis was my college roommate. We’ve been friends for 25 years. She’s fresh off her third run of chemo and has in her hand a report from her Dr. that says “cancer-free.” She’s ready to celebrate, and she’s worthy of this sanctuary and all of the peace, love, and joy you always offer to my guests. Then Meredith closed her eyes for just a minute, breathed deeply three times, pushing back some unexpected, happy tears - and added, “Oh, and by the way, this has been a surprisingly good day. Thanks for the memories.”