Cat's Away
Actually, the cat is not away. The cat is staying at home with me, and Sam is going to Indiana to pick up some belongings that a friend had been storing. (I could have gone, but I need to pack. Haven't gotten much done in the evenings lately--last night I feel asleep at 9:30, which is almost Catena hours!) So, I'll have the house to myself this weekend.
It's the way I lived for 33 years, but it's become a foreign idea pretty quickly. Only last year, PJ told me that she dreamt of redoing one of the rooms in her house so that she could have a little private retreat, and I remember experiencing a twinge of pity that she didn't have a space of her own already. I also then understood the redecorating project that took place when I was about 12, and my sister and I didn't need our playroom anymore. The 70s wood paneling and red carpet were covered or ripped up, and in their place appeared a rose-colored room with big soft reading chairs, an antique marble-top table, and a desk for my mom: her space.
Sam and I are about to put "my" space on the market. It's the second property I've legally owned, but since my condo in grad school was always more of an investment, it feels like it was my first real home of my own. But as JS pointed out on her recent visit, "there's no space for Sam in this house."
And when I look at the new house, there's so much of my husband in it that it makes me tear up--and not only of himself, but also of his driving desire to build a home for us, even here in this little town that he had planned not too long ago to leave. He is in the impeccable smoothness of the walls that he repaired for days and days, in the quality of the tiles in the kitchen, in the meticulous edging of the paint, in the trim lawn and the neatness of the once-overgrown picket fence around back.
I would have been happy to move in without a lot of the work done, and then when we came back from Europe, I wasn't able to work as much as we'd expected. So he took it on himself, and with heroic effort and the expression of himself as artist and craftsman, has made it into a place that now feels even more like my home than the house where I've been living for the past two years.
It's the way I lived for 33 years, but it's become a foreign idea pretty quickly. Only last year, PJ told me that she dreamt of redoing one of the rooms in her house so that she could have a little private retreat, and I remember experiencing a twinge of pity that she didn't have a space of her own already. I also then understood the redecorating project that took place when I was about 12, and my sister and I didn't need our playroom anymore. The 70s wood paneling and red carpet were covered or ripped up, and in their place appeared a rose-colored room with big soft reading chairs, an antique marble-top table, and a desk for my mom: her space.
Sam and I are about to put "my" space on the market. It's the second property I've legally owned, but since my condo in grad school was always more of an investment, it feels like it was my first real home of my own. But as JS pointed out on her recent visit, "there's no space for Sam in this house."
And when I look at the new house, there's so much of my husband in it that it makes me tear up--and not only of himself, but also of his driving desire to build a home for us, even here in this little town that he had planned not too long ago to leave. He is in the impeccable smoothness of the walls that he repaired for days and days, in the quality of the tiles in the kitchen, in the meticulous edging of the paint, in the trim lawn and the neatness of the once-overgrown picket fence around back.
I would have been happy to move in without a lot of the work done, and then when we came back from Europe, I wasn't able to work as much as we'd expected. So he took it on himself, and with heroic effort and the expression of himself as artist and craftsman, has made it into a place that now feels even more like my home than the house where I've been living for the past two years.
posted by Tara | 10:38 AM
3 Comments:
That is so beautiful! What a wonderful way to make a house your home, even before you move in.
And I still can't believe that list of chores that you did there. Whoa!!!
I really, really love this post.
lovely!
He doesn't hire out by chance does he? I could use some impeccable tile and wall work.
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