The Cat Rug
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My husband and I have different tastes in home decorating. I think there should be a master plan, a style, a theme that harmonizes the individual pieces. His philosophy: "If I like two things, then they go together."
My greatest surprise when we bought our first house was that he'd even have an opinion about home décor. I thought I'd decorate and he'd say, "That's fine, Honey." I should have known better. I should have realized that the art of decorating, as with everything in marriage, involves the art of compromise.
My wake up call was the "cat rug." I'm not talking about a rug where the cat sleeps. This monstrosity is a large latch-hook rug that prominently features a Siamese cat. It showed up in the hallway of our first home shortly after we moved in. The cat rug came to be a sort of shibboleth between his people and my people. You either "got" the cat rug or you didn't. I and my people didn't.
In my defense, my only prior encounter with latch hook was when my sister was given a latch-hook project as a form of occupational therapy during an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital.
My husband's family, on the other hand, is a bastion of latch-hook tradition. His beloved grandmother held a black belt in latch hook. She single-handedly created enough latch-hook pieces for every member in the extended family. Her influence moved other family members to dabble in latch hook too. In fact, my husband's first latch-hook rug graces the floor of our daughter's room. And now my sweet, but naïve daughter is sitting at her dad's feet with her very own latch hook.
Also in my defense, growing up I never had a cat long enough to grow attached. The few animals we had in our home either ran away or threw themselves in front of moving cars (except for the turtles, who threw themselves under Dad's lawn mower).
My husband's family had a Siamese cat for nearly 18 years. I sense the cat's importance in the fact that she is the subject of more home movie footage than some of the children.
Not long after we settled into our new home, some of my college friends came for a visit. The first item on the agenda was a tour of the house. "What's with the cat rug?" one of them asked, with all the tact of a really close friend. I tried to explain my in-laws' latch-hooking tradition and their beloved Siamese cat. "But why do you have to have it in your hall?" she asked.
Obviously she wasn't married yet.
After the walk down the aisle, I was faced with a crucial choice: to accept lovingly all aspects of my spouse's personality in the "front room" of my life, or to shove parts of him into the "garage." His hand-me-downs, his hobbies, and his habits are all part of the deal.
For me, love means having a cat rug on the floor, even if I don't see how it fits the overall decorating scheme. Love means an antique Spanish sword on the wall, a dartboard in the family room, and a bookcase dedicated to baseball card storage. For my husband, love means living with a flowered bedspread, enough scrapbooks to document the history of the world, and an abundance of fake ivy scattered around the house.
Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2006, Spring, Page 56
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Average User Rating:
Abigail
Thank you for sharing this terrific article. A good read for every married couple. God bless and continue to make you a blessing.
Mario
Nice article...need to be read by both couple not just one
Ikwo
thanks so much for sharing. often we tend to forget that our partners also put up with some of our not so pleasant side. its important to keep the need for compromise and surrender on the front-burner of our minds.
Mary Brown(Registered User)
I appreciate this, Beth. Thanks for the reminder about surrender.
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