In our house in Illinois one wall of the living room was almost all windows. My mother is a true romantic when it comes to things, as opposed to people (except for my father, who exists in her fantasy/mind). The other wall of the living room was a huge fireplace, stone. Stone fireplaces in the Midwest are made of sandstone or limestone. Maybe not limestone, since I think it disintegrates. Fireplaces here are completely different--they're made of river stones, which are round. Midwestern fireplaces are made of square, brick-like, parallel pieces of stone.
The fireplace was massive. It had no mantle, but there was a ledge in front of it for you to sit on. When my mother came home from work (she was a public school teacher, and with her work ethic she was exhausted by the end of the day) my father would get her a glass of dry sherry and she would sit in front of the fire, feet up on the ledge, sipping it before making dinner. I like remembering that part of our midwestern life. We also had time like that when we got home from church: my mother reading the Sunday papers while she sat there sipping her sherry. We subscribed to 3 papers: 2 Rockford papers and one Chicago paper. My father was an avid reader who enjoyed knowing what was going on. I attribute this to his having grown up in a small town (which is now MY small town), where everyone knew everything about their neighbors and the surrounding communities.
My mother put a bed next to the windows--we used it as a couch. I think she didn't want a couch there because the back of the couch would block the view. One of her favorite things was "blue snow." There's a time in the evening when the snow is a very pretty blue. I see it a lot, and mostly think of my mother when I notice it. I must be romantic and sentimental, like my mother.
Take away the mountains in the background and this could be northern IL.
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