The "I Want" List

Notwithstanding my last post, in which I claimed my materialism has vanished, there remain a few material things I'd like to have at some point in my life.

Number one is probably

A GARAGE

No, I don't drive and never will, at least until we trust the Googlecars. But I do scrape the windshield in the winter, and that's not a task I relish overmuch. Especially after freezing rain.
In all the houses I've lived in--over thirty--I've had a garage once, and it lasted for less than a year before it got treed in a nasty summer storm.  Miraculously, the car inside the garage at the time sustained only minor scratches.
That remains the worst storm I've lived through. There were no tornadoes, just some mighty downbursts producing wind speeds in excess of 160 km/h (100 mph) and toppling trees all over town. Some people in Ingersoll went over a week without power...and we lost our garage. I've been pining for it ever since.

Number two: A FIREPLACE

I know that it's almost indescribably bad for me , that in a sane world, fireplaces would be illegal and their use harshly punished. (Don't believe me? Read that Sam Harris essay.) I know all this, have known it for years. And yet--A house just seems more like a home with a fire burning in it. Witness your dog or cat sitting so close to the flames that you wonder how it doesn't just spontaneously combust and instead it's just luxuriating in the warmth. There's something about a fire. Call me irrational, but there it is.


Number three:  A LAZY-BOY RECLINER

a.k.a. "the Daddy-Chair". I want a chair with heat and massage, the kind of chair that gets all weepy-eyed when you have to leave it. I want a chair that states This is the head of the household.

(Anyone who finds that last bit sexist: paraphrasing My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I may be the head of the household, but Eva is the neck, and the neck turns the head.)

Number four: A GRANDFATHER CLOCK

I don't know where this obsession came from. I've never had one. Truth be told, I love clocks in general, the more unique the better. One of my most prized possessions, destroyed in one move or other, was this:



There is probably no object on this earth I want more than that Arrow ball clock. Eva tried to buy one for me our first Christmas together; the company had just gone out of business.
Barring that exact clock, I'd like a grandfather clock. Its stately, sedate and somehow comforting presence speaks to me of stability and reminds me that this too shall pass.

Number five is related to number four: A VIEW OF WATER

This isn't, of course, a material thing...and yet it is. It is in that a house on the water will cost you easily fifty grand more than the same house that's not. To me, at least, it's fifty grand well spent.

River, lake, ocean, it doesn't matter. I'm not like Eva, who seems to have been a mermaid in a prior life, but I really appreciate the calming effect of water. I love the sound of it, trickling and sloshing. Someday we plan to retire to a place that has a water view. We'll probably have to search long and hard to find such a place that doesn't bankrupt us. But we will search and we will find, because this one's number one on my wife's "I want" list.