Let’s start here, today. You may think me crazy (a post for a different day) but here’s a basic lesson in personalizing your space: GIVE IT A NAME. Go ahead, I dare you to see what happens. I don’t care if you live in your rusted out van – name it. You have a name. Your cat has a name, your state, etc…you want to engage in a healthy relationship with your environment? Name it.
Not your dream home you say? Take a number. I have had the tremendous privilege of living in some beautiful houses in my life. None of them were my ideal, for a variety of reasons. Currently I live in a 1950’s mid-century ranch. This is quintessentially my least favorite architectural style. I was raised in a dysfunctional family during the 1950’s and 60’s: mid-mod gives me the willies.
My personal style is traditional all the way. It is so not happening here. Nothing grates my one last nerve more than ignoring the architecture of a house and it’s vernacular when decorating. But there are ways to S T R E T C H these boundaries successfully.
My son found me this house on Craig’s list. I had exhausted the available options in a very limited market on a very limited budget. The seller was in the midst of flipping this house, but the essential basics were done. Unlike many of the houses I had seen it was live-able. I could move in and finish it over time. When I prayed and meditated on this option I clearly heard: “you are being placed.” Say what….?
Shortly after moving in I woke at first light to look out an eastern window. The gnarly old tree out front was crowded full of Cedar Waxwings looking in at me. I will never doubt this placement, nor the grace that brought me to Hawthorn Hill Cottage.
“The home should be the treasure chest of living.” – Le Corbusier
Cathy B. Graham is one of my favorite artists, not least of all because she is inspiring and funny. She re-invented herself in her sixties with her illustrations and her two books; Second Bloom and Full Bloom. They are among my favorites. Her tablescapes are wonderfully whimsical.Notice the watercolor paintings in the dining room and throughout the home; those are her originals. She decorates with vegetables and food and flowers and toys and….she also designed the linens, the invitations, the dishes, the book illustrations….there isn’t anything she can’t do. Let her remind us all to let our inner child play and be delighted in everything we do!
“…you are the perpetual arranger,” said a childhood friend one day many years ago. It is true that I am constantly changing the furniture layout, the menagerie of items, the plants indoors and out, the accoutrement of life. C’mon – you do it, too, whether you are conscious of it or not. We are the curators of our own space. It is a thankless struggle when we are raising children, but it is innate. Now in my later years it is an act of pure delight. Don’t put that there! That goes over here…see?!
My darling mother used to say, “I’m just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” How many times I’d been astonished and befuddled by how she managed a big house full of five children (six if you count my father, who certainly qualified.) We would laugh, but I always had the same reply: “It matters, Mom. The arrangement of the deck chairs matter as long as we’re standing here on deck.”
A friend recently confided that her mother thinks her house is cluttered. I’ve been told that about my homes since my early 20’s. But let me tell you something about my friend’s house. The house itself is beautiful, but there is a less apparent component: I walk in and I FEEL an energy shift. She arranges her home with INTENTION. Like myself, she believes her home is her sanctuary; a living altar. I’ve already asked her if I may come film a short video for the blog after the holidays. I’d like to investigate this process with several people whose homes I admire for different reasons.
In design terms, we are maximalists. I am just as disheveled by clutter as anyone, but clutter is not useful nor attractive. And there are ways to live with the belongings you love without them becoming visual clutter. There are specific ways to do that, and we will explore those here in the coming weeks.
The internet is – pardon me – cluttered – with videos about clutter. Believe me, I’ve watched them discerningly. I’ve read the books (glad to share my favorite) and yes, clutter is a symptom of PTSD. It is both indicative of and perpetuates mental unrest. But most of the approaches I have found fall short of long term solutions; they address the symptom rather than the cause. Have we not learned better yet? We’re seeing the manifestation of this in our health care system. Yes, recognizing a problem is the beginning of finding a cure. We’ve got this.
I love my stuff. I love my home. AND, I love my health, mentally and physically. Health is a lifelong goal I will not compromise (shall we talk boundaries here yet?!) The goal is also beauty, inside and out. Health and beauty are two sides of the same coin. Beauty is a sacred affirmation to our spirit, to God, that we are thankful for the grace in our lives. We are paying attention. We are outgrowing survival mode. We are committed to life. Can I get a witness?!
But beauty is entirely personal. AND, I insist – NOT based on economics. You can live a beautiful life in a beautiful place with or without money. Stick with me and I’ll prove it. (I’ve made some pretty cool decorations out of the plastic netting the onions came in.)
What are your seven favorite things at home?
“Nothing is interesting unless it is personal.” – Billy Baldwin
Almost a decade ago I began this blog, meant to be a lifestyle blog, and ultimately an expression of what home has meant to me. But it has often been about the process of my life, about personal growth and healing. It turns out that “home” means something different to each of us, and has common threads that connect us…and that we all FEEL home within. We feel beauty and appreciate it differently – but we all feel it – physiologically and psychically. Comfort is a visual sense of beauty as much as it is physical. Our spirit recognizes an uncomfortable environment as dysfunction; something is off. It matters to our well being. Let’s explore this further in the days ahead, especially as the long dark winter sets in here where I live.
A craving for beauty has driven my life forward when nothing else could. Color excites me, greenery makes me feel alive. Music and birdsong open my heart and the floodgates of tears, both of delight and grief. I’ll welcome it all.
This morning I had seven young deer in my yard. The past year-and-a-half have brought physical struggles with Lyme disease for me, which the deer carry. I will learn to protect myself, but I will not run them out. These deer all looked like young adolescents. Deer hunting season ended a week ago and my guess is that the adults of the herd are gone now. I can’t imagine living on a planet where you are hunted.
I’m using this video to help illustrate some of the ideas I want to explore here with you. Namely, what are the elements that create a sanctuary home – and WHY is this an important objective? I think it’s actually an innate motivation for us all. Pay attention to how you feel watching this – how are you affected by the soft colors and the imperfect surfaces? Sarah Stanley is looking for her home to “lifts the spirits and stir the soul.” A comfortable home is never perfect. Welcome to The Fable:
“And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the grey day someone close to you could die. This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next…this is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life. There is no house like the house of belonging.” – David Whyte, The House of Belonging
She’s afraid of beige…I so get that. Beige is a euphemism for mediocrity. Mediocrity scares me. It has frightened me away from writing, here and elsewhere. It has frightened me away from painting. But ya know what? Screw that…I will turn 70 in a few months. I’m tired of being afraid – of anything. I’ve lost people that I don’t know how to live without. I’ve lost beloved pets – some of my best life companions, shitloads of money, my sanity more than once…
When I began this blog many years ago I was grieving heavily. I still am. I’ve come to understand that grief is part of my everyday life, and I am so good with that. It’s a portal to an open heart and a remarkable way to live more fully.
Since you have wandered here today, please come back soon. I’m going to explore this world again and I would relish your company, and your input. I plan to write and share ideas, music, books, and most importantly, inspiration. I need more of it, and don’t we all?
“…the insidious, evil, creeping taupe…” – Alexandra Stoddard
“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong.” – my Mom, Doris
“This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. There is no house like the house of belonging.” – David Whyte
Well, I wanted to write a blog post about the fabulous home of designer Thomas O’Brien showcased in the latest video by Quintessence. But I’m fighting back tears…it has sparked childhood memories of sliding down the banister of my grandparents huge old Tudor in Detroit, shaking out cornstarch on the linoleum so our feet would slide when we danced the Twist, and of watching scary movies at a friend’s renovated old colonial in Birmingham where I used to dog sit the beagles Liberty, Justice and Freedom, and of the smell of old polished wood and ancient roses…and life.
My parents bought a rambling Cape Cod when we five kids were little. It was old by 1960’s standards; the architect had built it for his mother in 1926. I loved that home for many reasons, including the hidden staircase from inside my sister’s bedroom closet to the attic. And the faerie-sized garret doors perfect for squirreling through to hide. But I remember playing hide and seek outdoors most of all, crawling inside the peony shrubs that lined the 400′ lawn between the house and the Detroit River. They were so old, stems so woody, that they were hollow in the center, a natural fort of branches. They had been planted when the house and gardens were new as a frame inside the majestic willow sentinels. Those trees were taller than the fourth story of the house (where my room was in the eaves) and drifted lazily down to the grass. They whispered to me at dusk that everything would be alright; I swear they bowed to me every sunrise. They kept my tender heart swathed in hope and beauty.
As the house let sway the hours of the day, activity increased around me. I heard the movement of a family, sometimes peaceful, sometimes in glorious song together, often engaged in a personal war, always a family. The willows were still. Downstairs my father or my sister practiced on the grand piano in the living room hours on end. Their repetition, their mistakes, unnerving then, are now fond remembrances.
Such an enchanted life we all live, whether or not we realize it in this moment. I am grateful for all of it, all of the struggle and the beauty. Here, I get a sense of it all rushing back to me. I love watching and listening to these two. Thomas is obviously happy to be sharing the home he truly loves. Susanna Salk always puts a smile on my face. She’s such a “tourist” – she gawks and is demonstratively awestruck – as we all would be. And she’s paying attention! There is no pretension or affectation. She admits she’s embarrassed at just noticing the fireplace two hours into her visit! They both make me feel more creative and more alive by their inspired way of life. Watch closely, you will see the willows in the garden bowing…
This house has been one of my “all-time favs” also…this artist has got it goin’ on. You know she’s living life to the fullest. Susanne gets it: it’s deeply personal. Not being a drinker, I don’t know what much of this stuff is that she’s talking about – but I DO drink Limeade…and am a coffee-holic. I’ve always made coffee ice cubes so my iced coffee doesn’t get diluted. I’m serious.
Anyway, I maintain that all “true beings” love color, Lulu, and that we make far too many compromises in our own love homes. My home is a love home – I love my home, my land, my pets, my bed, my memories, my time here , my sweet, sweet life…
“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
Elizabeth Gilbert is an American icon, of course, and certainly one of my heroes. As an aspiring memoirist, I have followed her career since Eat, Pray, Love made her a household name. Here she takes us on a silly tour of the house she was selling in 2012. Gorgeous house! (Great artwork, too.) Damn. Missed it, or as Maxwell Smart would say, “missed it by that much…”
For some reason she is uncharacteristically giggly here, but nonetheless, stick with it to see the magical details built in to the “SKY-BRARY”, and the gardens. Not yet in bloom, I can only imagine how glorious they are in the summer.
We know much heartbreak would visit Liz in the years to follow, and yet still somehow the writing that would inspire us all to keep going. I only wish her well, and that her recent living spaces have proven worthy shelters for such a magnificent spirit.
It’s a humid, hot day in northwestern Michigan, but there is a wind, and so I must have the windows open. I love my home; I love my hills…could I ever leave? Oh, sure. Like Liz, I have always moved often. There is something inherently cleansing for your soul about paring down; always editing. Homemaking is so completely, consumptively, creative. So I do understand her selling…maybe…I guess.
It seems that perhaps I do have a story to tell after all. And I am only now figuring that out for myself; perhaps beginning to glean some worth in the mess, some reason to tell it. All of my adult life people have said that I should write my story, and all of my adult life I have dismissed this suggestion as frivolous, egotistical, and frankly, boring.
Embarrassingly, I note that the most recent blog post here was September of last year, nearly ten months ago. Shortly thereafter I “went south” (sounds like I’m on vacation) – my personal term for sinking into depression and withdrawing from all but a few close soldiers. This recent willingness to risk sharing again was sparked by the funniest little thing…a photo in a magazine article about a cottage restoration. God works in mysterious ways. Actually, I think God works in any way available.
There I was, reading my favorite blog, drinking my morning coffee, looking at pretty pictures…the blog, Content In A Cottage, (wish I’d thought of that name!) is an almost daily hit of inspiration about life in a small space. Rosemary Beck is a middle aged woman like myself, and has shared the huge recent losses of her Mom and her beloved dog, Webster. But she has found a rhythm that suits her in posting often and briefly, sometimes by simply sharing what someone else has already written. Today it was a picture of a cute house with a link to an article in Gardens And Guns Magazine. First of all, I would never subscribe to a magazine with the word guns in the title. It made me laugh right off though, thinking of Will Thacker in Notting Hill, posing as a writer for Horse and Hound.
This article is so well written by Allison GLOCK (God has such a great sense of humor) that I want to read it again. I think it would have been delightful even if it hadn’t been about my favorite subject. The transformation of the house is inspiring, and the result altogether enchanting. But, frustrated and grief stricken now by over sixty years of not being true to myself, some of the photographs brought tears of sadness and disappointment. Everything that interests me seems bittersweet at this stage of my life. And there – in that split second where delight and discouragement co-exist – THERE is the crux of any meaningful story. There, for my son and all the others who live in that juxtaposition, is the gift I will continue to explore in my writing. Because only there do we have a choice to make – that can, and does, effect our future.
That photo showed “freshly cut olive branches” in a vase on a table. That was all it took. The tears could not be denied. My olive trees are gone. I still miss them. Years ago now, my husband and I drove up to a house we were looking at to buy, and five twisted old olive trees bowed noble along the drive, the stubborn sentinels of a long ago orchard. They were FULL of Cedar Waxwings. I knew immediately this was my next home. It was magic. I fell in love with those trees the longer I lived with them. The leaves were soft green on one side and silver underneath. Thomas Jefferson said “the olive tree is assuredly the richest gift of heaven.” That quote, cut from a magazine years prior, was glued into one of my notebooks. I had always wanted olive trees.
One day I drove home from work to find the olive trees gone, leveled by my husband and a chainsaw. Stumps. “Messy old junk trees,” he called them. I was devastated. I couldn’t talk, and went straight to bed. I had no inkling he didn’t like the trees; I never knew they were in danger. Never had a chance to defend them. I knew the Waxwings would not come again. But the real tragedy took hold slowly over time. To this day, my now former husband doesn’t know I loved those trees. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t trust him with my heart. I knew he would become defensive and angry, telling me how ridiculous and unreasonable I was being over stupid old trees. It was, of course, also about more than the loss of the trees. It was about not being considered in that decision. I knew then that they were never our trees. They were his. This wasn’t our home, it was his. It took a dozen more years, another move, and many more heartbreaks before I would leave. It took my greedy silence and selfish denial a lot longer to surface before I would come to realize this path of stoic silence was a death trap for my soul – and that I was worth saving.
In the movie The Martian, there is a scene when astronaut Mark Watney must launch himself into space without a ship or any safety mechanism, and soon he will either be rescued and go back to his wife and child, or he will die. Either way, he will never be the same man who left the earth on this adventure. After fighting for survival all this time, you watch the dawning of this realization move across his face – that this has all been immeasurably precious, each terrifying, hard and painful moment he has endured. Precious. And he cries. Seldom has a movie caused such a response in me. I experienced the moment with him, of despair and terror and elation and hope – all at once. The crux. The “bleed through” between life on earth, and the Kingdom of Heaven. The Holy Instant, A Course In Miracles calls it. Whatever you may call it, know that these exquisite moments will come again and again until we live in the “bleed through.” Because life, like space, does not cooperate.
For Turkey Day, I thought I’d share a dining room tour with P. Allen Smith. It is the home of the artist Rebecca Thompson, whose studio I featured yesterday. There are so many design elements I admire and ascribe to, especially the personal touches that delight the senses…home is, after all, heaven for beginners.
Listen to the details that this design genius points out; I always learn from him. Enjoy your dining today…XO
A Painterly Home 