My Life As A House – Family Room interlude

Jackpot! Last night I found a 25 page beginning to a book Anita was writing. It’s a personal memoir written in 2006 that uses our house as a metaphor for her life. I will be sharing it in pieces. It’s maybe her best writing ever.

The Family Room

7/8/06 – 3:04 am

This is one of my favorite times of the day. I tend to pay a hefty sleep-deprived price to experience the languorous quietness of these wee hours, but more often than not I just can’t resist. My days are filled with work and deadlines and partners’ and clients’ needs, concerns and desires. My nights, such as they are, are consumed with my children’s needy pleas for their mother’s attention – a treasure they get too precious little of. My husband generally gets what’s left after the job and the kids – sometimes an attentive ear for an hour or so about his day, his challenges, his dreams. I love it all. It makes me who I am. Problem is, there’s not much left for me.

So it’s times like this when I get to be “me.” I read frivolous chick-lit. I surf the Internet, researching arcane subjects like the rise of globalization and the peak oil theory. I plan our financial lives like a grand maestro – how are we going to afford that trip to Disneyworld? Well, if I save $100 every month for 19 months, then …. And college. And weddings. And what if Ben wants to own a car repair shop instead of going to college? Does the Nevada 529 plan provide that flexibility?

But one of the best parts of this time is my ability to live in my House. I mean, just live in It. I walk around, running my hand along the rustic graininess of the dining room table I fell in love with months ago in Cost Plus World Market. My gaze drifts to the artificial sunflower arrangement, placed just so on the sofa table behind the living room couch, well within the sight-line of the sunflower-drenched kitchen area such that the two rooms are subtly and thematically joined yet still stand alone. The library’s obscenely expensive floor covering ended up costing easily twice as much as I intended, but I recline, catlike, in its soft plushness and am assured it was well worth the trouble. Even now, a good 4-5 months since we moved in, I’m still astounded at how unfinished the House appears. The dining room table beckons to no one, as it’s surface is quite hidden under the canopy of my vagabond stemware (where am I going to put that stuff?) and I still suffer from nervous eye twitches each time I see that big IKEA bookcase that I loathe, awkwardly propping up a corner of the family room. The previous owner painted a faux rope above a picture she had hung on the wall. In reality, the picture hung from a string behind it, but the painted “picture hanger” was a nice effect. The picture, however, is long gone – the painted effect remains.

But isn’t a House just like that? It unfolds slowly, carefully, and in its own time. It has a language all its own that speaks to you – whispers is more like it – a little at a time as you live in it, work in it, play in it. It holds its secret design plans close to the vest. The House – if it’s the right House for you, that is, and when we refer to it as a House with a capital H we can pretty safely assume that it is the right House for you – does, indeed, hold the perfect interior layout for the natural flow of you and your family. That chair should be placed just so so your father can recline and nap near the warmth of the fireplace in the winter and see the beauty of the outdoors from the wide living room picture window in the summer mornings. Your daughter’s art table should rest several feet behind the sofa so she has space to create, but also so Ben has his room to run. Oh yes, your House knows this. It knows, in its bones, how It should be filled and arranged to most perfectly facilitate the flow and breath of your family. But It won’t tell you – at least not all at once. You’ve got to live It. You’ve got to make mistakes, then learn from them. If you can just trust and have faith in the process, the House itself will reveal its pre-destined design. But you’ve got to believe.

And be willing to wait on it.