Postcards to Myself

Sasha the Cat sleeps in a deep, semi-liquid state on my lap. The yellow leaves drift down as thick in the air as the snow flurry we woke up to on Thursday. People squawk that it's too soon for snow in October, but I clearly recall all of those Halloweens in furry, full-bodied costumes hidden beneath winter jackets.

I sit in a bright white room that is my own. It is quietly, awkwardly occupied by furnishings Jay and I have magpied together over ten years. We closed on this, our first home, on September 10th. It has all the features we could have hoped for - plenty of space for a family, a yard, woods, and rushing stream, a woodsy dirt road with close-but-hidden neighbors, a quick drive to town. It fell into our laps in a completely cosmic turn of events, and each day I am humbled to call it my own. Still, it feels new and foreign, fussily decorated and haphazardly loved, and very much as if we are squatting while the owner is vacationing in the Galapagos Islands for the winter.

Our very human reaction is to nest, nest, nest. Our heads are filled with lists and tools and swatches and lumber. Over the winter, we hope to start making it look like us. The white walls will become shades of green and blue and beige. The wall-to-wall pink carpeting will go to more appreciative households as we put down warm bamboo flooring. We may even replace the fussy white trim with something humbler, like cedar.

With monster claws, we mentally add in big windows in the dark bedrooms' gambrelle roof, and built-in drawers and closets; the windows fly out of their rotting sills and we replace the crumbling serpentine brick path with slate found on the property; the sprawling, overwhelming gardens levitate and reassemble into plots with gentle curves and lower maintenance. Maybe the musty, partially finished basement carpet, a mold-trap that makes me itch all over, will become tiles? Maybe the drywall will be professionally cleaned up after we route the washer drain into the septic, instead of off the hillside...

I ask everyone I can find about oil-free heat and hot water systems. Today I am drawn to setting up the entire system on a cluster of instant-hot-water heaters, or putting the whole project off until a pellet boiler can be afforded. What about a little woodstove in the living room, for the blustery winter days without electricity?

Will the two-tiered porch, which leaks water through the pretty balcony and lets in cold drafts, be converted into a sturdy little mudroom?

Will one day the two-sided horsebarn in the woods become a summertime cabin?

Will we someday rip out the lopsided mis-matched kitchen cabinets?

There must be a name for this surge of possessive nesting, this chemical need to revise and mold one's space in their personality's image.

Whatever it is, we've got it bad.

10-17-2009
West Chesterfield, NH