The Long Haul
We are settling in here on the hilltop. It’s been ten months now and while it is a bit arbitrary, I suppose that at one year we can declare this as home sweet home. All my life, through fully twenty-seven addresses I have called home, I have been forced by repetition to settle in quickly wherever I have gone. Kim knows that I want pictures on the wall on day one. That’s how I know I’m home and can focus on things other than familiarization. All’s well with my world when the pictures are on the wall.
The physical interior decoration of the house was relatively easy since we had owned the house for eight years before we “moved in”. Much of the furnishings were things I chose from a distance and then those were supplemented by a few things we brought from New York. I had long ago shipped in those pieces from Utah that had either waited for me in Utah or that had traveled from Utah to Ithaca and then back here. The artwork is a blend of pieces I have had for a long time, pieces Kim and I have bought together along the way and pieces bought specifically with this house in mind. I left most of the decorating and staging to Kim and her mad artist, Kristoffer since any arrangement would satisfy me. Kim needs to make this feel like our home, which is to say hers and mine. If demographics are any guide, this will be her home longer than it will be mine. I want Kim to like everything about this house. There is no man-cave here. The study is a shared study at my suggestion even though I use it more than she does. The closet is perhaps 55% Kim’s on account of the vanity at the far end. The living room is well-shared right down the middle with a slight edge now to Kim given her serious recent study and practice at the piano. While there are two excellent bonsai, including our 150-year-old Texas Ebony tree and a Chinese Elm, they are cared for daily by Kim and I gave them to her for her birthday this year along with a nice Juniper bonsai kept out on the deck opposite the indoor duo.
Several years ago we renovated the kitchen and literally rearranged it from one end to the other. It is fully Kim’s kitchen and the renovation extended into the dining room where Kim’s mother’s Japanese china is on full display through glass-door cabinetry redone specifically to show her china off. The guest rooms and guest bath have been rearranged and decorated for Kim’s liking since she is the hostess of the manor and most of the rooms’ residents are likely to be her friends and relatives. Kim has even put her mark on the guest bath by replacing all the glass enclosures and having the marble professionally ground and polished. About the only vestigial room, if it can be called that, that hasn’t gone through a transformation was the laundry room. Kim had wanted to redo it when the kitchen was done (something about not liking the mauve coloring and it being too ‘90’s-like). I had gone tilt on the cost of the kitchen renovation so I vetoed the laundry room knowing I would relent once we moved here. And so I have. She is having it redone by our favorite “Closets, Closets, Closets” gal.
The traditionally male province of the garage has also now been redone, but for every inch of workshop built-in for me there was 1.2 inches of craft-center and wrapping-station for Kim. She and I equally share the siting area in the garage, So I feel it is at least shared territory. The out of doors has been a logical place for me these past ten months. When one is home bound, and especially in a new home where the sun seems to want to shine almost every day, getting out of doors and digging in the dirt is natural. I built Cecil’s Garden for Kim. I built Moonstruck Madness games area for the grand-generation be they my kids’ kids or our collective nieces’ and nephews’ kids, and mostly to do something to tart up an old and crumbling dog run that was barely ever used and is unlikely to see use from Betty. While building the path and the bridge to the games area, I had a hard time not noticing that the entry area on either side of the driveway was looking a bit sparse and uninteresting, so fifty cacti later, that problem too was solved.
When I concluded that the patio needed replanting, it was a family decision. The only socializing we have been able to do in 2020 has been done on the patio. We have been surprised to find that our plan to eventually create a Tuscan country dining experience on the patio with a long wooden family vineyard table and chairs was ill-advised and never done. Instead, for reasons of what, frugality?, we chose to keep the two round patio tables and supplement them with yet another round table. That has given us four separate eating tables (adding the counter) so that we can serve three other couples, remain socially distant and each go up to get our food at a serving table, one table at a time. The configuration has worked well for us, but the mismatch of the old tables (our housekeeper tells me that they were owned by the prior homeowners for fifteen years, which makes the tables almost twenty-five years old) and the cheapness of the supplemental tables (made of an inexpensive Brazilian wood called Ipe) has made it time to get the patio settled in.
So, after spending several weeks replanting the patio area and creating a very attractive and pleasant garden for us and our guests, it was time to address the patio furniture. One of my problems is that I have a design sense that makes me not want to have same-old same-old furniture anywhere in the house. I cannot swear I have achieved that, but I try to see that we craft a unique sense of style, not necessarily eclectic, but at least unique to us and not run-of-the-mill. We finally (who am I kidding, I did online searches for a day and a half) found something that appealed to us both and today we made the purchase. It’s interesting that our first choice of wood color and fabric was either 8-10 weeks out by special order or else not available at all. With a slight adjustment (some might say compromise) we actually ended up with something we may like more than our original choice…and it arrives in eleven days from now.
While I am sure this will not be the last of our modifications or improvements to our new permanent home, I must say that this outdoor, socially-distant and now “permanent” configuration seems to me to be an acknowledgement that both COVID and this house are here to stay for us. That, by definition, is living in the long haul.