You have to be kidding me, I thought, leaving my apartment the other day and noticing a shockingly “autumn” orange-leaved wreath on the apartment door kiddy-corner from my own. It is the only adornment on any of the doors in my modern and trendy apartment building. My building is the kind of place where marketing directors would decorate their advertisements for the community with phrases like “East meets West in simple harmony and clean lines” and “Life with Style at VillageGreen”. We have a community room. The leasing company hosts happy hours for the young and upwardly-mobile professionals who live here. There’s a Zen garden, for the love of God (or Buddha, I suppose).
This is no place for wreaths.
And what makes this particular orange wreath even more shocking is that it is the third in a series of wreaths to appear on the door. First there was a white-flowered wreath that made me assume the occupants of the apartment were either gay or grandmas. Second there was a green wreath of plastic pine needles, which I did not necessarily associate with summer, but now, with the orange-leaved wreath I clearly see that there is a seasonal pattern in the door decorations.
Of course since then I have learned that the occupants of the apartment are neither gay nor grandmothers. They are a ridiculously happy couple. The kind of couple that holds hands in the hallway. That goes to watch television together in the community room. The kind of couple that doesn’t reach out to neighbors because they are so happily involved in themselves. And their wreaths.
I hate that wreath.
What kind of a guy lives in an apartment with a wreath on the door?! I thought as I walked past. I’m sure I scowled as I thought it. All sorts of non-politically correct thoughts jumped into my brain, including, I am sad to say, “What a pussy!”
But, in my surprise at my own vehemently angry and ignorantly condescending inner monologue, I started to realize that I was really getting way too worked up about my neighbor’s apartment door. Katie, I said to myself, in order to address the unfounded amount of rage swelling in small waves in my inner ocean, why does that wreath piss you off? It’s just a wreath. Let it go. He probably loves her very much and knows it makes her happy to put the wreath on the door.
And with that I started to picture the life inside the door with the wreath. The life I hear only small pieces of when she, and I imagine it must be she, starts to play the piano they must have inside. Careful notes fill the hall as I walk past. I picture them holding hands in the hallway. They are quiet and polite when we meet in the elevator.
As these images flood my mind I realize that what I hate about that wreath is that five or six or seven years ago I would have been the one hanging it on the door. I would have been delighted in my new domesticity with my new husband in our new place. I would have hung the wreath on the door as if it were my hopes and heart that I was placing very high and in a special place. There. Love, Life, come visit us and be generous. We are just so happy. We are so in love. WE. WE. Whee!
I do not hate the wreath.
I do not hate the girl who hangs the wreath.
I might hate that I wasted energy on such a wee endeavor when there were more exciting avenues in life that I needed to explore. I might hate the girl I was, the one fixated on wreaths and scrapbooks and pasting memories carefully into frames. There. This is us as the perfect couple. There. That’s a picture of my happy family. There. Welcome to my perfect life.
Life isn’t perfect. It is so much more beautiful to me now that I see it for the wreck that it is. I am so infatuated with the mess that is life that I haven’t time to hang orange-leaved wreaths upon my door.
But…
maybe someday I will.
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