FLASH MEMOIR | How to decorate.

She never shies from an overblown chintz, an acid green, lattice over leaves on the lanai.

Too much, she says, is often just right.

“Take a page from Decorating is Fun!” she suggests, but (and this is the joke) “just one.”

She’s about coordinating fabrics and furniture suites, though by the end, her midcentury relics live alongside antiques and one-offs. She defies expectations by calling IKEA “ingenious” but never shops there.

There is a place for everything and everything’s in its place. If you ask, she will bring down a treasure, cradle it, let you see, before returning it to its permanent home.

She teaches in tiny doses.

Rooms should have at least two colors, plus neutrals.

Try gold accents, chinoiserie details, touches of black. In open spaces, tones should recur.

A description of her city apartment overlooking the golf course: Expect More Peach.

I help with her last room – Split Singles in a Florida condo. Side-by-side beds like Lucy and Ricky’s (Ernie and Bert’s). My grandmother is over 80, and legally blind. We visit a store so I can finger the fabric for the bedspreads, describe the colour, read tags aloud. It is vivid, but I struggle to verbalize the greeny-bluey truth of it. Not turquoise, not teal. It is the colour you see in a peacock feather, ringing the indigo heart.

“Is it too much?” she asks, and finally, I know what to say.

It is just right.

This little flash piece was published in Dead Housekeeping, May 31, 2017. A PDF is below, just in case. Those kind folks over at DH were kind enough to nominate this piece for a Pushcart Prize at the end of 2017.