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My mother has always had her own ideas about interior decorating, and while she's very good at collecting various accoutrements that live up to her initial concepts, there's always a sense that someone has gone with a theme and hewed a little too closely to the concept.
I'm certainly no one to judge, as my idea of unique aesthetic design has, over the years, included a Beetlejuice inspired bedroom and a Murder Scene bathroom, replete with faux bloody handprints on the semi-translucent shower curtain, but whatever design choices I make, I am certain to do a little bit of research before I delve into them.
The first thing I never do when researching a theme in which I'm interested is look in "Country Homes," "Southern Living," or "Tuscan Chic and Useless Crap" magazines to inform my choices. My mother, however, gets the beginning of her ideas by cobbling together various images she's seen in these repositories of tasteless recipes for design disaster, along with those she's glimpsed while watching black and white movies with sets so garishly overdecorated that even the studio lights threatened to quit.
Every few years, or so, she went on another decorating crusade, and rather than simply retire the old idea, selling off the various objet d'art gathered together to create her one-note disasterpieces, she would relocate the theme into a single room of her townhouse. Guests, when walking through her home, would often remark on how well-coordinated each room was, to and of itself, which she took as a compliment; I, on the other hand, heard those statements for what they were - the accusations of a hoarding problem.
In 2008, after I fled Ft. Lauderdale to escape both a meth problem and a bad relationship gone worse, I briefly returned home to get my life together, reenter college, and find a new purpose for myself. When I first arrived, I was relegated to the upstairs of the condo, which was largely its own self-sufficient area, sans a kitchen.
My room was one of her abandoned design efforts - a nightmare version of a Laura Ashley catalogue. The color scheme was very simple: white with blue floral/paisley embellishment. What started out as a simple bedspread and comforter quickly turned into pillow cases, bed swags, lampshades, tea sets, tablecloths, wall borders, and, oddly enough, a matching upholstered chair inconveniently placed in the room alongside everything else. Set something lightly colored down on the bed, and you were likely to lose it in the sea of sameness, as was often the case when I laid my glasses on the sheets while getting dressed for work, leading to a ten-minute panic as I hunted frantically in the depth perception hell house of kitschy design.
It isn't so much that my mother fails at her design attempts. To the contrary, she actually does go out of her way to live up to the purity of her idea. The biggest issue is that she never knows when to stop. What begins as a good idea is ultimately doomed to turn into an obsessive compulsive buying spree. She's spent thousands of dollars on her semi-annual redecorating binges, and for what? Too much shit piled up around the house.
One of the hallmarks of my mother's overindulgent design aesthetic is her collection of worthless furniture. Each room in her condo was filled to the brim with knickknacks and useless furniture - chairs inconveniently placed for sitting; writing desks and secretaries purchased not for any functional, intended purposes, rather to serve as repositories for her various "accents" and decorative flourishes; picture frames filled not with photos, but with artistically lazy drawings of herbs and spices, seemingly taken from 19th Century apothecary manuals made prior to the advent of portable cameras. These objects are never sparsely used as accents to an overarching theme; they instead end up overwhelming the theme, turning each good idea into a serious case of overkill.
Lest it seem that my mother's attempts at design stop at interior design, I would be remiss if I failed to mention her kitchen nightmares. Her addiction to Phaltzgraff is the stuff of legend. Not satisfied to collect the basic dining set, my mother purchases entire patterns of dishes, including butter dishes, gravy boats, coffee cups, tea cups, tea pitchers - every piece of a pattern is lovingly purchased, and soon, each cabinet is stuffed to the brim with various dining sets, each used in accordance to the season they represent.
The last design attempt prior to my move to Los Angeles in 2010 was her obsession with Italy. My mother has always loved Italian food, so it should've come as no surprise that she would eventually attempt to recreate her idea of a Tuscan villa.
Somewhere along the way, she got into her head that Tuscan design was themed around roosters. Armed with this knowledge, she began her quest to collect all things rooster-themed, going to every store from the dreaded Pier One to the feared T.J. Maxx. It was at that last stop that she brought home what I refer to as the quintessential "Rebecca" moment.
"Look what I found," she exclaimed, bounding up to me with all the excited of a puppy delighted to see its owner home from work. "I found them at T.J. Maxx! Aren't they just perfect?"
The objects in question were two pictures of roosters set against a yellowed background with cursive writing lovingly scribbled all around the empty space.
"It's just the perfect Italian rooster theme I'm trying to go with for the kitchen."
It was one of those moments when I should've just let her go on thinking that she'd struck gold when, ultimately, she'd really dug up a lot of pyrite.
Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the writing that accompanied the rooster, its proud breast arched in the perfect presentation of its dominance, was not Italian.
"Mom...this writing is in French."
I knew that this revelation would start a fight, and perhaps part of me was spoiling for one of our epic arguments.
"No, it isn't! It's very clearly in Italian," she insisted.
"No, ma. I'm pretty sure that "vous" is the French pronoun for "you."
And thus began the row.
"Why do you have to nitpick at everything I like?"
And off she ran with that theme, berating me for criticizing every bad choice; for correcting every misunderstood perception and pronunciation.
Part of the problem with my mother's design aesthetic, from my perspective, is that she just doesn't know a lot about the period or culture she's trying to emulate. In the 90s, she tried to recreate the "English Country Cottage" feel. Having never actually been to a cottage in the English countryside, we ended up with a lot of cream-colored walls and floral print furniture. Then, she went on a sage kick, with the entire bedroom being designed around that ubiquitous "Sage Green" color. And then...and then...
Me being an insufferable know-it-all, there is a part of me that enjoys destroying my mother's vision of what she believes to be period design. Were she to design a room with a maple leaf theme, I would go out of my way to show her that she was actually using oak leaves as the basis for her design. I revel in being right, and as such, enjoy watching her explode when her beliefs are dashed against the rocks of reality.
The roosters, however, were there to stay, whether they were Italian, French, or Etruscan, and my mother went about purchasing everything she saw in any store that even remotely resembled a rooster. This is how we ended up with cups with chickens on them.
The real problem with people who design in this manner is that there are capitalists out there who know they can prey upon their weak minds. It's never enough to have a few pieces with roosters on them. No, my mother, like several other overeager self-appointed interior designers, will insist that literally everything adhere to her theme. The savvy capitalist knows that these hoarders are willing to spend any amount of money to get their hands on what they believe will complete their home, and so we end up with rooster-shaped salt and pepper shakers, all but certain to trap the granules in impossible to reach crevices in the wing.
I recently returned home to West Virginia, where my mother and step-father have moved in with her parents to take care of them in their dotage. Much to everyone's chagrin, my mother did not sell off her two decades-worth of objet d'art, and so the contents of her two story condo are now crammed into a single two-room floor. Once again, every room is filled with decorative, but ultimately useless furniture; now, it's just filled to the brim.
This morning, I went downstairs after a sound night of sleep to discover that my mother has broken out her roosters.
Proud as peacocks, they sit upon the kitchen counter, silently surveying the house around them as if to say...
"Je ne suis pas italien. Je suis dans la maison d'une personne folle."
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