The Nest Issue

Recently, I spent a weekend cruising design blogs and staggered off to bed on Sunday night satiated with Cute, Adorable and Fabulous. Is this what my life has come to?, I wondered, as I fell asleep with visions of dreamy paint colors, amazing headboards and stenciled wallpaper swirling through my brain. I used to get in dramatic arguments with lovers outside bars that involved smashing Irish Coffee cups and then falling into each other’s arms under noir-ish street lights. I stayed up late talking about T.S. Eliot and sex. I have been known to jump in fountains! But now I can be found lurking around sites that feature other people’s tragically hip lofts in Brooklyn and stuffed objects and artwork featuring hybrid creatures that are a cross between humans and bunnies. Yes, I would love for my house to be a work of art, but I also want it to be organic, an outgrowth of my own personality, not something I have to study or emulate or copy from tearsheets. My iconic shelter memory is of my grandmother’s house in rural Kentucky. It was filled with inherited objects—silver, quilts sewed by long- dead aunts, furniture that had the patina of decades of use by ordinary families. It was never changed over the years except for occasionally repainting or cleaning the wallpaper. It was timeless, solid, lovely, simple and hopelessly old-fashioned. Several generations had passed through it, sat in the chairs, leaned their elbows on the kitchen table. Their spirits lingered. I want to live in that kind of house, not an Ikea idea or an easy-to-assemble resemblance. After my weekend of design dessert, I want a timeless, solid, lovely, simple and hopelessly old-fashioned supper of a life.