A gal and a house

It’s been three months now that I’ve been in the house. My house. I still trip a little when I say that. It’s weird, almost as weird as saying, “I’ve been flying my plane now for three months” or “I’ve been piloting this yacht for 90 days.” I mean, who would trust me with a plane or a boat?

But here I am in this house, this lovely little house with the dark wood (?) floors and the drafty windows and the ridiculously optimistic shade of sunshine on the living-room walls. This humble little house with a shared driveway and flagstone walkway. The plantation shutters and the textured walls. The window over the kitchen sink where I can watch the birds in the birdbath. My house, with the rickety attic ladder and the peeling cork flooring in the back room. My bunker, my castle, my compound.

I’ll be honest: In many ways, it just hasn’t quite sunk in that it’s really all mine yet. It feels like mine in a way that my previous apartments — especially my last one at The Mayflower — have felt like mine. That’s because I have a tendency to get into a space and start immediately plastering things on the walls and hanging knick-knacks from cabinet knobs to make the place feel like home. I like to see my trinkets everywhere I look; to me, that’s what makes a home a home.

But here I am in a space where I can literally do whatever I want in every single room, and I’m still somewhat hamstrung by this feeling that maybe I shouldn’t change anything. That comes partially from the very awesome fact that I bought this house in great condition and that there wasn’t a single thing that needed doing. Not even painting (except for maybe the hallway; it’s a weird peachy sponge-painted color I’m not crazy about). So in a lot of ways, it feels like I’m renting a lovely little house and some day I’ll have to give it back in the condition I found it in. I’m scared to put my mark on it. The marks I leave on places are usually not good ones.

I can’t help but wonder if this feeling will simply change with time (three months is an infancy of a residency anywhere), or if spring will help coax a more fierce ownership out of me. I was talking to Aunt B and saraclark over the weekend about housey stuff, and I recalled when Aunt B experienced her first spring in her new house, and how things began popping up out of the ground and blooming and she just got to kind of watch her wintery homestead come to life. I am excited about the gardening possibilities, and seeing what’s been lying just under the dirt all winter, just waiting for some warmth as a cue to come up and meet the sun. It’s the daffodils I imagine I’ll see first, any day now, despite the snow that seems to come with odd regularity lately.

When the time comes, I plan to let my mother and my grandmother loose in my yard so they can tell me exactly what plants and flowers to put where. I am holding on to the hope that I have inherited even a fraction of their flower-whispering abilities. Because honestly, the thought of looking out my windows and seeing a yard splashed with color and shape fills me with so much joy and longing that I just about can’t stand it.

So. The house and me, we’re getting along just fine. With a lot of help from friends, I’m slowly filling the rooms with furniture so that they’re not so sad and unused. I’ve got some big plans for the back room, the one with the wall-to-wall windows (the one I’m calling the catnasium right now, yes, I’ll admit it). It involves new flooring and an actual bed. I’ve got to get serious about curtains before next winter. I would like to plot ways of getting a screened-in porch just off the back doors.

Lots to do. But we’re on my time here. And that is just about as awesome as it gets.