This makes me think of the song This Must Be the Place by Talking Heads (and covered beautifully by Shawn Colvin). All of the lyrics are about finding home, this is just one example:
Oh dear Catherine! I can relate so much to your home and losing that home. It’s a lot. My wish for you in your journey is a soft landing and settling back into home where your living, laughing, loving, and smashing cakes continue for years and years to come. In our similar moment, it felt as all we built into our home would never be again but it in hindsight I came to realize it was and is.
What a lovely piece you have shared with us all! Thank you!
Read this in the midst of my summer-in-the-desert insomnia, a phenomenon I have now come to expect since moving here, where the days are so fucking hot that even indoors, its sucks life out of you and makes you useless in daylight hours. However, the 2024 version is now laced with anxiety and a nightmare (and smashed) layer cake of a year of challenging life events not unlike what you've faced. But your "stories can create or provide architectures of reassurance" gave words to how I always found home in books and movies--their characters and places--that gave me safe spaces as a child when I didn't always have them in reality. And honestly, still, as an adult--or something resembling one. So, amidst all that you are facing right now, thank you for sharing those words and giving comfort to a distant internet sister who sees, understands, and empathizes with this moment you are living through. Sending you love and strength as you say goodbye to your home this month.
Thank you for sharing your own experience, Brooke (I know well the heat-drained desert insomnia), and your empathy. This is its own kind of architecture of reassurance, knowing that we're not the only ones feeling what we're feeling.
What a beautiful, thoughtful take on such a universal experience. To this date, I still mourn the apartment I loved in my 20s, a Greenwich Village loft. I sublet for two years and loved it every day. When the owners came to visit and saw I had transformed it into a home from a part-time, mostly unfurnished office space, they saw the vision… And took it back. It felt so violating to think of someone else living there, and still does. I walk by from time to time and look up at the gorgeous 10 foot arch windows and wonder, what’s happening in there, and could they possibly love it as much as I did? (Answer: Not possible.) In NY, we just get used to being kicked out at whim and moved around, if and until we can buy.
Now we are in the home I have raised my kids from birth, and it is filled with love and memories and cacophonous joy, and it’s way way WAY too small. Still, if we fantasize about moving, the kids say NOOOOO! They would like a second apartment right next to the one we already have. Same home, but different “house.” Sigh.
Here’s to making beautiful new memories in your new home and finding all the homeyness it has to offer in this next chapter for you. ❤️
Baking can be a ruthless teacher.
Wishing you comfort in welcoming walls and the unfamiliar ways of daylight in your new perch.
What lovely blessing. May the news of daylight become familiar -- yes. Thank you.
This makes me think of the song This Must Be the Place by Talking Heads (and covered beautifully by Shawn Colvin). All of the lyrics are about finding home, this is just one example:
“I'm just an animal looking for a home, and
Share the same space for a minute or two”
Ah, what a wonderful reference! I need to make a 'songs about home' playlist.
Ooh, that could be a very fun and fulfilling project :)
Oh dear Catherine! I can relate so much to your home and losing that home. It’s a lot. My wish for you in your journey is a soft landing and settling back into home where your living, laughing, loving, and smashing cakes continue for years and years to come. In our similar moment, it felt as all we built into our home would never be again but it in hindsight I came to realize it was and is.
What a lovely piece you have shared with us all! Thank you!
Your comment convinced me that we should bake and smash a cake as a rite of passage into our new home -- thank you <3
Love this so, so much!
Read this in the midst of my summer-in-the-desert insomnia, a phenomenon I have now come to expect since moving here, where the days are so fucking hot that even indoors, its sucks life out of you and makes you useless in daylight hours. However, the 2024 version is now laced with anxiety and a nightmare (and smashed) layer cake of a year of challenging life events not unlike what you've faced. But your "stories can create or provide architectures of reassurance" gave words to how I always found home in books and movies--their characters and places--that gave me safe spaces as a child when I didn't always have them in reality. And honestly, still, as an adult--or something resembling one. So, amidst all that you are facing right now, thank you for sharing those words and giving comfort to a distant internet sister who sees, understands, and empathizes with this moment you are living through. Sending you love and strength as you say goodbye to your home this month.
Thank you for sharing your own experience, Brooke (I know well the heat-drained desert insomnia), and your empathy. This is its own kind of architecture of reassurance, knowing that we're not the only ones feeling what we're feeling.
What a beautiful, thoughtful take on such a universal experience. To this date, I still mourn the apartment I loved in my 20s, a Greenwich Village loft. I sublet for two years and loved it every day. When the owners came to visit and saw I had transformed it into a home from a part-time, mostly unfurnished office space, they saw the vision… And took it back. It felt so violating to think of someone else living there, and still does. I walk by from time to time and look up at the gorgeous 10 foot arch windows and wonder, what’s happening in there, and could they possibly love it as much as I did? (Answer: Not possible.) In NY, we just get used to being kicked out at whim and moved around, if and until we can buy.
Now we are in the home I have raised my kids from birth, and it is filled with love and memories and cacophonous joy, and it’s way way WAY too small. Still, if we fantasize about moving, the kids say NOOOOO! They would like a second apartment right next to the one we already have. Same home, but different “house.” Sigh.
Here’s to making beautiful new memories in your new home and finding all the homeyness it has to offer in this next chapter for you. ❤️