Perhaps you have also, but in recent weeks I've gotten notifications and invitations from friends who have decided to jump over to a social media platform known as "Parler". I don't know if it's a less pestilential place to interact, but I really like the name Parler.
It sounds like parlance...like a speech or formal debate. That's clever. I definitely enjoy a good one.
It sounds like French speak...like "Parlez-vous Francais? Baguettes, Lacoste, Brigitte Bardot, La Tour Eiffel, et Notre Dame? Oui, oui!
But, really, in my nostalgia-seeking ear, it sounds like "parlor", or the "formal living room". The parlor used to be a space kept spotlessly clean and used primarily for conversation and the reception of guests. My Mom used the word "parlor" to refer to our front room just to the left once you stepped inside the door of my childhood home. See, this is how my mind works. One minute my cousin asks me join a new social network and the next thing you know, gimme three steps like the old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, and I'm back in 1977.
So here goes...
Things you might find in a parlor:
the good furniture, sometimes covered in plastic;
if you're rich or have a grandmother that taught music, a piano;
family portraits and photo albums (definitely the school variety, maybe staggered along a wall with those of your siblings and perhaps the white satin covered book marking the occasion of your parents' wedding);
a thick carpet recently vacuumed so that there are absolutely no footprints or marks, save a backwards line where the Hoover was meticulously dragged out of the room and handily unplugged;
crystal decorative pieces like vases, candlesticks, or candy bowls;
encyclopedias, and other books that suggested the guest was in the home of learned people (no paperbacks or copies of Sports Illustrated or the TV Guide; they were in the "den").
My mother dreamed of wallpapering our home's entryway and "parlor" with colonial gold pineapples because the spiky tropical fruits are a universal symbol of welcome and hospitality. I remember standing next to Mom in Frasier's paint and wallpaper store; me on a step stool, both of us thumbing through enormous book after enormous book looking for a freaking needle in a haystack; ummm, I mean looking for pineapple wallpaper.
Personally, as a small girl, I preferred the velvety flocked designs and would excitedly solicit,
"How 'bout this one, Mo-om?"
while rubbing my sticky seven year old hands all over the cherry-colored luxurious patterns, never mind what kind of non-pineapple fruit they had embossed in their furry Liberace-like loveliness. But no, Mom would shake her head and shudder, barely glancing over at what I'd found, as she knew that much to her decorating dismay, and despite her unwavering example of all things 1970's colonial, like eagles and revolutionary war soldiers and rusty plaids and olive greens, I'd turned out to be a really tacky little kid who thought the Solid Gold dancers were the pinnacle of sophistication and class.
Anyway, after what seemed like hours of hunting; I, slightly buzzed due to the paint fumes and the heady smell of pre-pasted vinyl, sat resignedly on my paint splattered step stool and began offering giggly hellos to anyone walking by. Mom, finally satisfied with the task at hand, held aloft and with conviction a huge black-handled book that we would be signing out on our honor and taking home to lay next to the wall for a fortnight so that she could see it in the light of the morning and the dusk of the evening, just to be sure it was suitable for our "parlor".
You might have already guessed, but it was.
Another item, if you are truly old school, that you might have also had in your parlor, were ceramic ashtrays. If you're old enough, you definitely remember when people still smoked freely and unquestionably indoors.
Our green household ashtrays were kept on the bottom tier of our mid century two-tiered end tables, sort of out of view, but readily accessible should a guest pull out a pack of smokes or a pipe while seated in the parlor. The ashtrays were in the shape of leaves and had divots in them where a cigarette could be set to rest in case the smoker didn't feel like holding it aloft and gesturing with it like Sinatra on stage in Chicago.
Finally, my childhood parlor had three windows that formed a sort of half circle on the east side of the house and when I make hubs drive by the old place this time of year and those very windows are dark and unlit instead of bedecked and adorned for the holidays, I slap the dashboard and become rather sputtery and indignant because it's the ideal spot for a big Christmas tree. Crikey! Why don't they have one? (Real Christmassy of me, I know, but I can't stand a perfect tree window - or three - going to waste this time of year.) Hubs just drives. He knows better than to argue against an exclamation like that (insert eyeroll here, I know I am ridiculous).
The parlor in my current home is where we usually sit for early morning coffee, reading, writing (I'm here right now) and non-distracted visiting with guests. One cousin affectionately calls it the "old lady" room because there is precisely not one modern object in here; instead we have soft watercolors and birds and Victorian style cherub prints. Recently, I laughingly referred to it as the Miss Havisham room because it could truly be a spot where the clocks stop and if someone dropped you here fresh from a Rumpelstiltskin-style snooze, you would be hard pressed to determine whether it was 1950 or 2021.
That, you see, is on purpose.
Bottom line, I adore this parlor and to circle back to the idea that started this whole thread, I don't know if I would like the other Parler. I like wallpaper that says welcome and hugs and face to face interactions and the smell of good hot coffee and flouncy furniture and even an old ashtray if you please; all with a big Christmas tree in the front-facing window.
Can you find me a social media site that feels like that? If so, I'd consider visiting that Parler.
