Ten decades. Ten thousand miles. Immediate indignity in the WideEyedHousehold. Or is it love?

The old stuff I bring home despite long and windy WideEyedSpouse sighs seems to get along ok with the old stuff already here. Basement-abandoned, mildew-stinking, dusty, grandparent furniture, lamps, rugs, geegaws – they all seem to agree to the neutral zone pact of the WideEyedHousehold: meld or hit the road. Each of them has a history with other families, sometimes these are decades long histories of ill use and hard living. Sometimes they glow as the treasures they have been and are to me now. I like to think when they get here, they are open to new histories, new families. And, dogs.

Two days ago the most recent old-thing arrived, a rug fragment originally from central Asia. It has been tooling around the world since 1920. Turkistan to someplace, [someplace to someplace], someplace to Arizona, Arizona to the WideEyedHousehold in Buffalo, NY. Packed in trunks. Rolled. Folded. Squashed. On trucks and boats and planes and feet. Ten thousand miles over ten decades. When my grandparents were young, it started out fresh, reeking of dye and new wool. Now, when I am not-so-young, it landed here, reeking of nothing at all really. Just, rugness.

Its ends are missing. Its sides are barely holding on. The weft is thin and the warp peeps out. How many feet tromped it? Carrying the dust and grunge of how many lands? How many fights or words of love in how many languages has it witnessed?

The old things have dignity in their experiences. And dignity attracts dogs. Evidently.

Welcome rug, to the love of dogs.