write me well

Tag: home

  • Home Things

    We’re not going to talk about how potentially far-distant home ownership is. Nope. This is, instead, a post about home things in the context of the house where we’re renting.

    Some background:

    I’m in Portland right now, writing this from the lobby of my hotel while on an evening break from attending my first ever APGA conference. (That’s APGA as in American Public Garden Association, not Advocates Professional Golf Association. There can be a lot of grass in both, but it’s an important distinction nonetheless.) Today is day two of conferencing, day three of Portlanding, and whoof, I am already exhausted.

    Traveling for work is one of those life tasks that seemed glamorous and fashionably professional when I was a kid. Thirteen year old Kathy, my favorite lens through which to measure my adult achievements in life, would not believe that I am seated on a creamy leather banquette, a fluted pint of beer next to my laptop, typing away with an array of brass lights and murals and cocktails for company. She’d probably think it was freaking sweet.

    Alas, thirteen year old Kathy is not thirty-three, and she doesn’t understand that your own bed is the best bed, and home is home. (And that conferences, educational and inspirational and well-meaning as they are, are by nature, conferences. And are thus deeply exhausting exercises in note-taking, coffee-consumption-regulating, and in 2022, N95 masking.)

    So last night, when one of the coolest people I work with (honestly, she is so cool) invited me to her local best friend’s birthday dinner at her home, I was quick to accept. Yesterday happened to be the first full day of summer weather that Portland has seen, so while I’m sure the evening would have been exceptional regardless, it was blessed with the extra magic that is a Summer Solstice full of golden, mid-seventies sunshine and sitting on the grass with olives and soft cheese and chilled white wine with a group of people that haven’t seen the sun for six months. In London this was always the best experience and I am happy to report that it was the same here in Portland.

    The entire evening gave me a really interesting combination of feelings that I haven’t fully processed yet. That’s part of why I’m sitting here, writing about it. First, I was surrounded by such clearly amazing people. One of the women I met had a very similar recent experience to me – she had been living in Brooklyn for 12 years, working in corporate retail, and got laid off in the pandemic. Between that, the sudden distance created by an inability to visit home and her nieces, and the realization that retail is some ruthless-hustle-based bullshit, she decided to move back home and change careers. She felt an even stronger version of the bittersweet longing for Brooklyn that I feel for London, given how long she had lived there. But she knew she made the right decision and she is in the right place now, and she was happy with her imperfect decision because really, all decisions are imperfect.

    The amazing woman whose home we visited, who has the fortune to call the longest day of the year her birthday, had not only the most impeccable taste in all things design, but shares with me some fairly random passions. A jeweller by trade, she specializes in English antique pieces, and has her own collection of enamel Victorian mourning rings (one of my favorite types of antique jewelry), which she pulled out and shared with me on the grass in the backyard while the sun set. She even, as one of her pieces of daily jewelry, wears a Tudor-era memento mori ring – something I have aspired to have of my own for years.

    And then there was her home. An early 1900’s craftsman, with its small porch, original hardwood floors, chartreuse kitchen cabinets, and Persian stairwell runner of salmons-and-oranges-and-browns, was an absolute dream. White brick fireplace. MCM built-ins but a lived in, cream linen sofa. Palette-knifed original artworks and lamps with stained glass shades handmade by her father. An oversized, oil pastel Picasso gallery print the sole work living above the fireplace. Cupboards full of vintage plates and hand-thrown ceramics. And above all, an open, easy grace reflected in her hosting and her own personal energy, that permeated every part of the place. As I told her when I thanked her for her hospitality before catching an Uber home, “Not to sound completely creepy, but I love everything about the home you’ve created. It is wonderful.”

    All of which is the background to the first sentence I wrote here. We’re not going to talk about home ownership and how distant that feels. We’re going to celebrate the progress in what my home is now, an imperfect place that I share with a human whose imperfections complement my own, which all works together to create a place that I would very much rather be than in a swank boutique hotel lobby. So while my intent with this post was actually to talk about the specific pieces of interior design progress I’ve made in our own (albeit rented) craftsman bungalow, it turns out the bit I really wanted to talk about was how it’s all come together to feel like a home worth missing.

  • Roots

    Some of my favorite memories are ones that are impossible to reminisce out loud. I was either alone or surrounded by strangers, which makes me wonder if they ever remember too.  

    Walking to buy popcorn chicken on lunch break from a driver’s education class hosted out the back of a strip mall classroom, hot summer sun and listening to Chutes Too Narrow while reading the book that was about to become my favorite for years. Sitting at countless coffee shops – I have sat at so many coffee shops over the years, because of all of the habits I have formed, it seems to be the longest running. Sometimes with my dog (he’s turning seven this year with a new family, another wild thought), usually alone. Almost always writing, almost never the same thing. Driving up the California coast, having cut through the hills to Laguna Niguel, walking through neighborhoods of the super tanned, super fit, super rich. Watching the ocean on several occasions, because you can never watch the ocean too much.  

    Are you okay? a friend texted me this morning. I’d taken the day before off work, for “reasons”, and she was just checking in. Oh yeah, I reply, Just general what-am-I-doing-with-my-future-life-is-really-weird-right-now malaise. I’m still sitting in that malaise and have been for a week. I spent the last hour looking at apartments in San Diego, even though I’m actively in the middle of sorting out the next phase of my life here in England. But I also spent five hours yesterday watching a show set in sunny southern California, a place that for me will always have a magic glow and impossibly vague siren call. In my dream world, that one with ceaseless funds and a job that allows a semi-rootless existence, I have two homes. One in San Diego, golden and salty and craftsman, with Gilmore, black iced coffees, drives down the 163 and warm walks through North Park and the Gaslamp. A lithe, aesthetic life where I spend my January to June. And across the world, I have my second home, from June to December. A terraced house nestled in a cathedral city, cozy and cold but faultless in the sun, brick and stone and the weight of a storied existence, energy moving from Roman to medieval to Georgian, all within a stone’s throw. A river nearby, because there needs to be water, and books and cups of tea and winding wandering walks, even just to a corner shop for milk.  

    Once when I was living in Long Beach, I decided to make a cake. It was a rare rainy day and I was only missing one or two ingredients. The rain stopped for a few minutes and I tried the tiny grocery a block over, walking rather than driving, getting caught in a downpour moments from the return to my doorstep. I called my mom for company while I baked my cake and tried to explain how much that innocuous walk had reminded me of living in England, of walking to the shops to pick up something, rather than getting into the car. I’ve never owned a car in my years in England, something that will likely change when I eventually leave London, but for now it’s something that draws a very specific divide through my life experiences. Everything about a car feels very Route 66 American, very freeway road trip traffic radio, very windows down Phantom Planet crooning California Here We Come. That will change, but I’m avoiding it. A car is the one form of root I haven’t planted over here. I think something about it makes me nervous in a way I won’t admit.  

    I haven’t had roots in a long time. It’s one of the beauties of being on your own, but it’s becoming exhausting. That’s where the malaise of this week really sits. Hiding beneath the very real exhaustion of living in Unprecedented Times, I’m tired of moving and the excitement of the unknown. I still appreciate how valuable it is to have options. But I would love, very much, to have this be the last “next phase” for a while. Whatever is next needs to last a while. Every move feeds that rootless self, that love of asking myself where do I belong? It makes me want to keep trying new places and finding new homes.  

    But I’ve already found enough homes.