It’s interesting that the concept of the “family bed” is being revived in the second millennium among young parents. Is it any coincidence that this is happening alongside multiple private quarters and the demise of the “family room”? The now defunct family room implied that family members had to reach a consensus about what to do together. It has been replaced by an open “great room,” in which family members may pursue individual pursuits. Today’s living quarters, it seems, are about accommodating different lifestyles and schedules. We build our homes for privacy and individuality, then we must invent “new” ideas like the family bed as a way to retrieve old-fashioned feelings of togetherness.
Fingerprints are another old-fashioned thing that was banished in the immaculate modern home. Our homes already have family fingerprints all over them, says author/photographer Mary Randolph Carter, whose classic American Family Style captures nostalgic lifestyles. Carter speaks of a spiritual concept that can be expressed on many levels in our homes themselves: cooking, gardening, and entertaining.
Hallways, notorious for family fingerprints, are a case in point. One young mom capitalized on this, helping her kids make hand prints all over the corridor walls, each with different colors of paint. Each year she adds a few more with their slightly larger hands or adds the hand of a toddler just joining the display. The hallway in her home has become a collage of family history.
No doubt the corridor is here to stay. Those of us who have lived in college dormitories will never forget late evenings when everybody gathered in the hail to swap gossip or to share funny stories, poetry, class research, notes, or papers. The corridor was a place to reconnect on an intimate level, the way you couldn’t connect anywhere else on campus. Doors ajar, rooms with comfy beds and chairs went begging when pajama-clad kids sat cross- legged on the floor just to hang out.