At Home

The front door to our home is blue, deep blue. It was that way when we bought the house. I don't know why it was originally painted that color, but we have never bothered to repaint it. I like it, so it will probably remain blue until some future owner of the house decides it must be changed.

Behind that blue door is the home I have lived in longer than any other place in my life. We bought this house a little over four years ago, and that period of time far outdistances any other address I have called home. This is the first home I have ever owned (well, the bank owns it, but we're buying it, bit by bit). Home ownership, like marriage and children, came late in my life. My restless nature was to blame for the delays. Like the James Spader character in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, the fewer keys I had on my keyring the more comfortable I felt. If everything I owned could be packed into my vehicle, then I wasn't overburdened. I moved through abodes more commonly inhabited by the itinerant and aimless, and I liked it that way. I lived my life like a song I once wrote:

Some day I'll find a new place,
an unfamiliar town.
I'll get a job, a furnished room,
and I'll try to settle down.
But soon enough I'll blow that burg;
I know that I'll be drawn
out to that old open road
and the thrill of being gone.
Sure it worries me a bit,
but I outrun those fears.
It doesn't matter where I'm going,
just as long as it ain't here.

Things change. Eventually inertia runs its course. I have a family. I have a home.

Our house is a classic California Ranch, built in the post-war boom 58 years ago. Once on the outskirts of town, it is now nestled in the heart, five minutes from the center. It is solid, framed with redwood and built not by construction workers, but by men called craftsmen who fabricated everything on site - no pre-made trusses or drywall here. Assuming the house is cared for, it will still be standing one hundred years from now. There aren't many homes built today that will come close to that. The original owners, the Burris family, wanted it that way. They were respected members of the community. Everyone still remembers them. There is a street named for them in town, as well as a county park. Although he passed away in the 1970's, his widow called it home for fifty years before selling it to the couple from whom we, in turn, purchased it.

It is open and airy, with more windows than would be practical in the middle of the country. The light pours in and races through the rooms, illuminating the walls and reflecting off the floors. It has only two bedrooms, but is bigger than any house in which I have lived. The rooms are spacious and flow into one another. Though it can feel modernist at times with its floor to ceiling windows and large open spaces, it has traditional details like crown molding, coffered panels above the mantels, and greek keys along the built-in bookcase. It's as if, they wanted to welcome the mid-century's new designs, but kept a toe in the past for safety. Even so, it doesn't feel incongruous - the elements were well-thought out and tasteful.

There is a doorbell on the back door to the laundry room. I have decided it was for the tradesmen to use when calling to repair some plumbing or perhaps sweep the chimneys - heaven forbid they use the front door. The neighborhood was that kind of a place; the rich part of town. A visiting friend once exclaimed immediately after arriving, "Where do you live? Beverly Hills?" That was hyperbole, but there was probably a time when to have lived on these blocks was to have made it - to be looked at as having achieved great success, though discretely expressed. Compared to today's McMansions and far more conspicuious consumption it is simpler, older, quainter. The neighborhood is one of quiet streets and grand, 100 foot tall oaks. It is those trees that makes the area so desirable, their shade cooling us in the hot central valley summers. The homes and lots are larger than average, still well kept - most of our neighbors have gardeners - but there is not really an air of wealth here, just solid respectability. I call it Eisenhoweresque.

We have made some improvements to our domain. On its large lot there are new Japanese Maples and three, sturdy, new Trump Oaks that line the curb and will, one day, canopy the entire street. Those new trees have joined the Crepe Myrtle, the tartish Camelias, the Lemon, the Orange, the eager Magnolia, the Privet, the wispy Birch, the Peach trees, the giant Japanese Maple, the 70 foot Liquid Ambers, the grape arbor, the enormous fruitless Mulberry that shades the back of the house in the August heat, and the 30 foot gray palm for which we turned down $15,000 (only in California do people come to your door and offer you money for your trees).

Inside the house's cool, comforting walls the red oak hardwood floors, hidden under carpets since the home was erected, are now gleaming and golden. The bathrooms have been refixtured and painted, the spaces brought up to date, while, like the original owners, still keeping a toe in the past for safety. The house has been furnished with period pieces from the mid-century. Two comfortable chairs circa 1960 that originally adorned a lobby at the University of Houston have been recovered and relocated to our living room. They share the space with a biomorphic sofa; a 1957, Brown and Saltman knockoff of a much more expensive Vladimir Kagan design. An Italian scissor chair was my great indulgence, but virtually all of our furnishings were purchased second hand and fitted into our home with a tender snugness. The house deserves to be of its own time, but not to the point of abandoning the present; not to the ridiculous. It is warm and welcoming to me when I enter it. It is my home.

It is strange to feel so attached to some place when I never imagined any such attachments in my life. To feel a connection to a space - and such ease within it - was, for so long, a foreign concept. Of course, a home is not just about the space, but has as much to do with the things and, more importantly, the people with which you share it. This is my family's home; the place where we became a family and in which my children have begun exploring the world.

My past was restless and there are times that I can feel that same desire flare up in me. To untie myself from these bonds and set myself adrift again can, on a bad day, be very appealling. But my blue door is solid and safe. The road can beckon, but my home - my family - are all I want, really. The light painting through my windows, the drowsy, rustling, shade of my trees, the bouncing echoes of my children's voices off the hardwood; these are miracles of a spirit finally at rest, finally at home. But maybe, one day, I'll paint the door.