Making a comeback

The last person I worked for had a book on their shelf called "Better Homes and Gardens, New Decorating Book".  I picked it up and fell in love and bought one for myself.  But the funny thing about it is that this book is from 1981.  34 years old home decor, and I love it, and as I looked through the book I had to question, just what is it about this book that made me want to buy it and reference it and keep it on my own shelf?  I promise I will answer that.
  I have been reading books lately about women who have in one way or the other changed the way we see things...Jane Goodall, Sister Helen Prejean, a local San Diegan Miriam Polster and how when these women were little girls what they gravitated towards then propelled them fairly steadily into their future selves.  Like when Jane Goodall as a young child sat  and watched for four hours to observe how chickens laid their eggs.  Or when Sister Helen Prejean says for as long as she can remember she has always loved the mystery of mass, stained-glass windows, silence and music.  She can't remember ever not believing in God.
   I watch my 12 year old and 8 year old nieces...one stays in the guest bedroom and draws at the desk while her whole family is in the other room dancing and playing music and taking pictures.  The other niece, in the center of the living room, busting out moves in well-placed rhythm and rhyme. One knows she wants to be a veterinarian and has traveled up to UC Davis (known for it's veterinarian prowess) to get a tour of the campus, the other struggles with academics, but shows such love towards old people you'd think she was secretly one of them.
  The stuff we have inside of us will come out.  And that is what I saw when I bought that book.
For as long as I can remember I have been creating spaces, making homes.  Growing up in Michigan we had a long dirt driveway and with every rain we'd get huge mud puddles in the potholes of the drive.  I'd make that mud puddle my "house" and the girl I grew up with, she'd have the mud puddle "next door" and we'd visit each other's mud puddles.  We would put large stones in the mud puddle to act as a table or a seat.  We'd be filthy, but happy.  We had a lilac bush, a few of 'em, that grew close to each other in the yard.  I'd make the space under the lilac bush my "home", one room a lot bigger than another.  There were trees everywhere in our yard and some with such large, heavy branches they would droop to the ground.  Where they lay, along with the trunk of the tree would become the outline for my kitchen, bedroom, living room.  My dad made a raised, small room a few feet off the ground, with a slanted tin roof and ladder...home.
 Now in re: to 1981 and specifically the New Decorating Book.  I was 6 years old in 1981.  I visited my mom in San Diego, California. My mom has a great eye and has been decorator in some form or fashion all her life.  This book I have is a complete guide to my mom's sense of decor when I visited California (a far off land from a farm in Michigan) in the first years of my young travelling life.  It's wicker and ferns and textures and light.  I'd seriously copy some of what I see in that book now in my own home.
I bring any of this up because I saw an oak shelf headboard on Craigslist that I really liked.  And I had to laugh because no one does oak any more.   My mom's house in the 80's was oak to the fullest...coffee table, gossip bench, dining room table.  Today it's either black or white or mahogany (which I love btw).  So maybe in Ess Gee and I's life, oak will be making a comeback:-).
While I am a far cry from a Jane Goodall, I must say I do find it fun and fascinating to think about the things you did when you were little and how they magnify themselves in your life now.  And if they are not magnified, and it matters to you, then find out why and bring them back to life.