"People Don't Care What Pillows You Got On Your Couch. They Just Want A Piece of Pie and Your Company'"

How Mamaw taught me more about hospitality than Martha Stewart and her ilk ever could

Martha Stewart was a very big deal when I became a homemaker in the late 1990s. She had a daily tv show where you could learn things like painting the handles of your garden tools bright colors, so they were a) easily found amidst the grass and dirt and b) infinitely cuter than plain wood. She had line of stylish household goods at Kmart, everything from bed sheets in a winsome, muted plaid to long-stemmed glasses we were told would elevate even plain drinking water to a whole new level. Martha was also at the helm of Martha Stewart Living Magazine, a lifestyle publication juggernaut that dominated doctor’s office side tables and the mailboxes of women across the country, inviting us to bring “sparkle and joy!” to our holidays by setting out oversized wooden bowls full of glitter-coated glass balls, and instructing us on how to change a room’s shape with paint color.

It was a heady time to be a homemaker. For me at least, new to the whole idea of cultivating an atmosphere for a family, Martha’s ideas drew me in, inviting me to view my space as a blank canvas I could use to make the lives of my family and friends that much more beautiful.

Except my canvas wasn’t actually blank. When we made the decision that I would leave my job and we would become a one-income family, we lived in a rental that had started its life as worker housing for a furniture factory in a small town in North Carolina. Built in 1921, the original house was a bare bones dwelling that could have been made adorable by the right person— the right person who also had a lot of money to invest. When we moved in, the paneling on the walls was still resplendent in all of its early 80s glory, and the knobless, pressboard cabinets all gapped a good half inch due to warping or the distinct slope the kitchen floor had taken on over the years.

The house was a stretch, even though it was just one step above section 8 housing, price-wise. It was owned by someone my husband knew through work, one of those guys who bought up distressed properties and put just enough work into them to make them legally habitable. Our house had an electric heater in the bathroom that could not be turned off, not even on 95 degree North Carolina summer days. “Open the window,” was the advice. Being just 22 and 25, we complied, grateful that the bathroom window wasn’t painted shut like most of the others throughout the house.

Oh, how I hated that house. Hated it. I can remember pulling up to park in the yard (the house had no driveway; it was either park along the narrow street and risk your car being hit or jump the low curb and park in the grass like everyone else) and trying to find the positives about it. The front porch, which ran the length of the narrow front of the house, had a swing where my baby girl and I spent many hours. The front door had a glass panel that was low enough that my new walker was able to peek out front and look for squirrels. And alongside the side of the house there was a tangle of brambles that turned out to be lilac bushes. I concentrated on these things. They didn’t satisfy me, but they kept me from crying every time I had to admit that this was where we lived.

Inside, I did what I could. The owner said that any improvements we made could be taken off of our rent. The problem was that we had very little skill and even less money. We painted over all the paneling. I had no experience in choosing colors, so I literally scanned paint chips, pulled two of my favorites, and bought them. They didn’t really fit the feel of the house or coordinate with our college chic, hand-me-down furnishings, but I was clueless. I also didn’t know that flat paint isn’t the best choice for well, most things. Even so, our “Telluride” living room— a kind of Aztecan pink/beige/tan— was such an improvement over the dark faux wood that we felt like we’d upgraded substantially.

This was where I was, mentally, when I made one of my regular treks to the other side of the Appalachians to visit with Mamaw and Papaw: trying to superimpose Martha Stewart Living onto a rundown little shotgun house so close to a working factory we could hear the whistles that signaled the end of every shift. I was five and a half hours from home then, and it was easy to strap my one baby into her car seat and make the drive. Papaw always paid for my gas, and Mamaw never let me leave without refilling my styrofoam cooler with meat and exchanging my empty jars for ones full of the corn and beans and beets she canned. I could let my toddler run under the same tobby worm tree that I had found shade under as a child, and climb wooden stairs that weren’t threatening collapse. Home had always been a respite to me, but in this season, especially, of wanting something I couldn’t have, it felt like an escape.

It was our first night of the long weekend, or maybe the second, after I’d put the baby to bed on a pallet in the floor of the room Mamaw still called mine, when we started talking. I had been training my eyes, you see: filling my mind and creating an appetite for the way things ought to be. We were sitting in the living room, Papaw was weeks away from his first stroke then, and had dozed off in his recliner, top button undone on his pants for comfort. Mamaw was in her own recliner, her fingers worrying the satin cord trim on her house coat. I drank it all in, weighing the room more than the people in it.

“Mamaw,” I started, “you ought to paint this room.”

“I know it, Baby,” she answered. “We tried to hire a man last month but he wanted ten prices for it so I guess it will wait.”

“What color are you thinking?” I asked. The couch was a chocolate brown, the end tables, floor model tv, and everything else a dark, outdated oak. I tried to imagine what a spread in Martha Stewart Living might suggest. “Spiced Cider” was having a moment. I had seen it in multiple Sherwin Williams ads.

When I snapped to, I realized Mamaw was looking at me like I had two heads.

“White, child,” she finally replied.

I don’t know why I was suprised. I had spent over two decades in Mamaw’s house and never seen anything but white on the walls. No wallpaper. No decorative border. Just plain, white walls dotted here and there with the same Home Interiors party framed prints of wagon wheels and barns and quail that all her friends had. Still, I thought maybe I could enlighten her.

“You know, you could try a little color. And maybe some throw pillows here on the couch. It might make your guests feel more welcome.”

Now she was looking at me like I had three heads. I could tell she was deciding what to say, and it scared me just a little bit. I’d been on the backside of one of Mamaw’s comments designed to remind you of your place a time or two, and felt just as bad as you might imagine. But when she finally opened her mouth, what I heard was designed to get me to think, not to mind my manners.

“Baby, do you think folks come here to visit this house? Do you think I ask them to sit a while to look at how purty my walls or, or so I can spend time with them?"

Yes, I was put in my place. And all my thoughts, my hours spent leafing through magazines peddling a vision I could never afford, my mornings pining over a tv show demonstrating how I could live a better, tidies life? Also reordered, instantly.

The day before I’d spent all of my baby’s naptime making a list for her first birthday party, which was . The truth was, I was terrified. I could have hosted the party at my in-law’s (my mother-in-law had suggested it many times) but my family felt out of place there, like secondhand shoes on a runway. I also wanted to have a hand in the event, to celebrate something that was personal and meaningful and had redefined me as much as it had brought a new person into the world. So I had sent out invites and was shocked at the number of RSVPs from friends and family who were excited to celebrate with us. Our tiny, run down, scrappy little house was going to be seen by everyone it felt. I was unprepared, nervous, and a little sick about the whole thing. What would people think of our rough wood floors? Would they notice that I could only afford the cheapest reusable cups and didn’t own a set of separate dishes for entertaining? If I cut some lilacs and brought them inside, would that count as “decorating”?

But folks don’t come to visit a house.

They don’t arrive at a birthday party wondering if you’ve updated your kitchen.

They don’t ask whether or not you’ve jumped on the newest washable rug trend.

Becoming a homemaker in the era of Martha and her stylish friends didn’t set the bar too high— it set it in the wrong places. In all of my time consuming the content she churned out, I never once encountered an article or video segment on how to comfort a grieving widow, a skill I’ve sadly needed more often than instructions on how to choose the proper lineup of crystal glasses for place settings at a formal dinner. I didn’t learn how to pause chopping tomatoes mid-canning to clear a space at the table for a friend who dropped by for some fellowship from Martha. And I surely didn’t learn to curate child-friendly spots that invite long afternoons of reading and dreaming from her. All of that I picked up from Mamaw, whose house wouldn’t have been deemed worthy for a magazine spread then, and wouldn’t cause folks to stop scrolling IG to take notes now.

The art of hospitality has so much less to do with presentation than with presence. The problem? Presence doesn’t sell servingware, or throws, or candles. No one is marketing long silences, or tears of joy, or embraces that last until the last drop of emotion is wrung out. These are the bits of welcome that have no price tag. They’re invisible. They’re also invaluable.

I’ve been a homemaker 28 years now, and I love my house. I no longer have to look for things that give me joy in my space— it’s there, always. But guess what? There’s a big, unfinished patch of repaired ceiling in the corner of my living room. My dishes don’t match. My walls need painting, and are a sad beige that would almost (but not quite) make Mamaw proud. And yet, people feel welcome.

Our elderly neighbor has no problem at all using precious bits of his energy to slowly make his way from his doorstep to one of the rocking chairs on my front porch to drink a glass of tea from a mason jar and jaw my ear off for an hour. My sweet friend from Idaho seems comfortable sharing stories from her life with me on the 15 year-old couch in my living room. My children’s friends don’t seem to mind that their picnic lunches here are served on thrifted corelle and don’t feature glass pitchers of lemonade with decorate fruit floating in it for effect.

As Mamaw said that night, tying up any loose ends of doubt I may have had about what she’d just set me straight on, “People don’t care what pillows you got on your couch. They just want a piece of pie and your company.” I am grateful my experiences in hospitality were shaped by this wisdom far more than the kind that was shared by Martha Stewart. I can’t imagine what I would have missed out on if I’d clung to the idea that I should spent time gluing themed flags to toothpicks for appetizers instead of just opening my front door and issuing the statement every Appalachian knows means welcome:

“Jeet yet? Get in here and get ya something.”

In Christ,

Heather