As I read my way through descriptions of one author’s hideaway after another, what became clear is that those set-apart spaces are invitations to creativity made real. Much like the act of walking, entering them relieves the workaday parts of our minds, allowing the rest to let go, dive in. On the old maps of the world, there was often a phrase, written above the uncharted parts: terra incognita, which means “unknown territory.” Crossing the threshold of a dedicated writing space feels much the same. You leave the known world, your everyday self behind.
Hic sunt scriptors. Here there be writers.
* * *
—
YEARS AGO, I HAD the chance to go to a women’s writing retreat called Hedgebrook. It is set on a pastoral island in Puget Sound, with a farmhouse as its central gathering spot. Scattered through the thirty acres of quiet, dense woods behind the farmhouse are six hobbitsized cottages—small, private worlds, one for each resident. When you open the arched front door and walk in for the first time, it is like entering your own imagination, a nutshell that will grow trees.
At Hedgebrook, there is no commitment to write a certain number of words, and yet the carefully planned design is there every step of the way to encourage creativity. The living room is small but offers a long desk to spread out research, a comfortable chair by a woodstove, and a window seat. We all write differently, the design says. The kitchen is just big enough to heat a pot of tea. Your job is not to cook for others. The woodstove is small and requires tending. You are capable. A narrow ladder leads to a bed in an open loft. Writing is part dreaming.
The sense of having each of your needs seen and understood by the very architecture that surrounds you can bring out a similar attitude toward the words you write. It is not unusual to hear anecdotes of extraordinary productivity, and deep explorations into parts of the writing soul that had previously remained hidden.
I left Hedgebrook a different person than I’d arrived. The space itself had redefined me, and in the following years, whenever I felt my resolve wavering I remembered my cottage and the way it felt to be a maker of words in a place that was only for writing.
Now, in Port Townsend, I had the chance to design my own space, using everything I had learned about architecture and creativity. Down below me in the orchard, the place where the two trees once stood waited, ready for ideas.
* * *
—
AS A RENOVATOR AT HEART, however, I discovered it was unnerving to think of creating a structure from scratch. I spent months pondering the orchard, stalling. But what I finally understood is that no building, just like no person, ever truly starts from scratch. Every structure lives within its setting, a natural foundation before the ones we build. My setting was a troubling one—a wound in the earth where a sequoia and a spruce once grew, a gap in the circle of trees. My shed would be a chance to make things whole again. I came to see that it needed to be as much of the natural world as of the mind, a place that welcomed healing as well as creation. I still didn’t know exactly what that would look like, though.
Then one day, I took a different route into town, and passed a large woodworkers’ shop. Outside it stood a small square structure with a wide pane of glass running down the center of each wall. It was graceful and spare, a calm container for a busy mind. I pulled into the parking lot and got out for a closer look. The space inside was flooded with light. The walls were white; the floor and trim, natural wood. The ceiling was made of thin slats held together by delicate beams, a combination of complexity and simplicity. Against the back wall, I saw a desk—there wasn’t room for much more. I felt my heart relax.
An old man came out of the shop. He was as thin as string, missing more than one tooth. Behind him I saw several young men working.
“You like it?” he asked. “That’s my office.”
I nodded. “Could you build me one?”
He quoted me a price so low I had to ask him twice, but he insisted.
“My name is John,” he said, and we shook hands for a contract.
* * *
—
YOU MIGHT THINK THAT my previous experience with leaping into building would have taught me a thing or two. Alas, no. I had been so caught up in the kismet of the moment, of seeing the exact writing shed I wanted, of having this old man from a fairy tale pop out and offer to construct it for me, that I had thrown all my hard-earned lessons to the wind. I hadn’t asked for references. I hadn’t asked if those sturdy young men in the woodshop were actually his team (they weren’t). And I hadn’t asked a question so basic that it isn’t even on the lists of what to ask prospective builders: Do you own a truck?
John didn’t. He didn’t even own a car. Ben and I didn’t figure it out until the third day of construction, when John disappeared for four hours and returned with a short piece of wood in his hand. Curious, Ben asked him where he’d been.
“I had to cut this,” he said, “so I walked over to my shop.” It was two miles away.
This is how it works in Port Townsend, as often as not. Time slows, expands, becomes a summer spent watching an old man put one piece of wood after another into place. But if you slow down enough, you might learn that the very skinny man so carefully measuring each piece of wood is someone who worked with a world-class architect before running away to find a life with gentler rhythms. And if you listen more than talk while driving him to the hardware store—because, while building as a Zen practice is nice, you darn well aren’t going to lose four hours again—you might hear a story about a slip on a roof, a broken back, a loss of all one holds dear. So if it takes four months to build a shed when two good weekends with a crew could have done the work—well, wasn’t a slower life what you’d said you wanted when you bought that trash-filled house so many years ago?
* * *
—
BY THE END OF SUMMER, the shed was finished, a thing of beauty that turned the orchard into a secret garden once again. Eight by eight, just like George Bernard Shaw’s hut, but my shed didn’t need to rotate. The sun moved across the sky, glancing over the tops of the lilacs, then slipping through the cherry tree branches, coming in through one long window after another. What interior walls there were, I painted white; the world outside was green. I treated the wood trim with Minwax, and the smell permeated the space, a scent like sunshine and preservation.
We had decided against gutters—the structure was so small we didn’t want to visually weigh it down—but it soon became clear that the runoff would hit the ground and splatter back up on the exterior walls. So I took the stones I had saved from that tall, tall chimney my son and I had taken down, and placed them around the perimeter of the shed, a river of rock that softened the impact of the falling water. The sequoia tree that once stood in that spot had been cut into live-edge boards, and now Ben fashioned them into bookshelves for me, their front edges curving in and out, in a graceful reminder that life rarely grows straight. And from the center of the ceiling, where it rose to a peak, I hung the last angel my mother ever gave me, years after I had children of my own. This angel is flying, her body thrust forward into the world, her arms flung back, each hand holding its own wing—a slim white bird feather.
* * *
—
OVER TIME, I HAVE developed a routine. I get up early and bring my coffee down the path, saying hello to the weather on the way. Most mornings, I write with an audience of deer, who wander into the orchard and watch me in bemusement. The other day, a raccoon walked by the glass door and looked in, curious. It reminds me of a book my mother used to read to me when I was young. In it, there was a little girl who wanted to play with all the animals in the woods. The simple line drawings show her chasing one after another, all to no avail. Finally, she sits down by a pond, despondent, but as she sits there striving after nothing, all the animals come close. It’s a good lesson for writers, and for people in general.
In the summertime, I open the old recycled French doors of my writing shed and let in the warmer weather, but i
n the winter, the big windows bring the outside in while the sound of the rain on the metal roof echoes the clatter of the keyboard. When I am in this space, I am a writer only. I leave the internet and the chores behind. I dive in. At the end of the morning, I walk back up to the house and the husband I have loved for so long, and I welcome the rest of my life into me. My day is divided by a door, a threshold, my thoughts on each side of it unencumbered by the other, just as it was when I used to come out to Port Townsend simply to write.
In this new structure for my life, there is room for both parts of me, literally and figuratively—and I love that the word room is an architectural one, a space inside ourselves that we make with our minds.
* * *
—
THIS IS THE BEAUTY, the power, of architecture—it exists both outside and inside of us, a dance between structure and self. And it is when we begin to recognize the integrated relationship we have with our built environments that we can effect change. We can design dining rooms that invite families to eat together, bedrooms that foster relaxation and intimacy, living rooms where a natural flow to a garden encourages us to put down our screens and go outside. We can think about who we want to be, and then shape our homes in ways that will bring out those best qualities in us.
And it doesn’t have to mean a major renovation or building project, either. There are many subtle changes that can make a big difference in your life. You can open up the space below a stairway, paint the inside a warm color, and create a hideaway for your child’s imagination. You can make an alcove out of a single shelf, line it with objects you love, and give yourself a place to stop and remember who you’ve been. You can designate a corner of a room, or even just a chair, and dedicate it exclusively to creativity. The trick is the cue, and the way it guides your mind. Each thing you do will make a difference.
Chances are that somewhere down the line, caught up in our busy days, we might forget why we made those changes. But this is where the power of architecture comes in. Those encouragements will always be there, whether we are conscious of them or not, like secrets we slipped into the walls, messages from us to our future selves: This is who you can be.
THE DINNER
A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start.
—Stewart Brand
ALMOST SEVENTEEN YEARS TO the day from when we walked in the front door of the house in Port Townsend and confronted the trash, we had a dinner.
Pastafest is our own family tradition, born out of a combination of necessity and invention and a desire to be together, as so many traditions are. It began when Kate was going to college in Canada, where they celebrate their Thanksgiving at a different time of year. She could only get the Friday off, and thus, several times we spent Thanksgiving evening waiting in a customs line at the border after picking her up. It could take so long that one year we ended up eating dinner at a McDonald’s, the only quick option we could find on the long drive home. Under those bright lights, we raised our chicken sandwiches high over the Formica table and toasted the holiday with waxy paper cups filled with water.
I can no longer remember why we didn’t just cook Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, but somehow we ended up with Pastafest, an event where we made pasta from scratch, all day long. It took as much effort as the Pilgrims’ holiday, but somehow the resulting meal was more satisfying. Ever since the year we’d cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for Italians in Bergamo—spreading the table with turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and creamed onions and cranberry sauce, and then watching their eyes fill with politely disguised horror at the cacophony of so many dishes coming out all at once—I’d been trying to reimagine Thanksgiving. It wasn’t the dishes I had the problem with; it was the lack of attention you gave the meal when you stuffed it all down in twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen.
I wanted a new tradition, one that had the feel of a long Italian dinner. Which is, I suppose, how we landed on pasta.
* * *
—
THE TRADITIONS WE CHOOSE to celebrate say a lot about who we are. There are the obvious ones—the birthdays and Halloweens and Passovers—but there are also the others, more idiosyncratic and intimate. The nightly bedtime story. A fondue dinner, lit by candles, to celebrate the first snow of each year. An annual hike to the top of a dark mountain to watch the Fourth of July fireworks in the cities below. By repeating particular events in particular ways, we create the architecture of our families out of memories and values. We shape them and they shape us, just like houses.
And just like houses, they can be renovated, changed to fit who we are now. A new tradition in the spirit of the old, because what that turkey dinner in Italy taught me was that Thanksgiving wasn’t about those particular dishes, or how well coordinated our timing was in getting them to the table. The spirit of Thanksgiving was gratitude, and whatever got you to that feeling was the holiday.
* * *
—
WE’VE BEEN DOING PASTAFEST for over a decade now. This year, we changed the date to January, extending the holiday season into a slow, dark month that needs a little celebration. Over time, the group around the table has extended as well. When I was growing up, holidays were immediate family only; Pastafest has changed that. This year, we had siblings and nephews, their partners, Kate’s in-laws, Ry’s childhood buddies, and their babies. We even had Kate’s friend Rebecca, who helped so many years ago demoing the plaster and lath. Now an assured young woman, home from a job in Washington, DC, she looked around the house in awe. It was her first time there since the day of the sledgehammers. She was the only one of us whose vision of that time had been preserved untouched, and through her eyes I was vaulted back. How young we were then, I thought.
This time, we created a cloud of flour instead of dust. Ry has grown into a man, a writer and a software coder—but the little boy who used to watch me cook from the vantage point of a backpack has also become our main pasta maker. That day saw him kneading pound after pound of dough and sending it through the roller, creating flat sheets of pasta, which his sister cut into fettuccine noodles. Kate and her husband are the owners of their own fixer-upper now. Just like me, she didn’t show it to her mother before she bought it, and just like my mother, I asked her, “But why that house?” For truly, I would never have taken it on. You can see the punch line coming—it’s a thing of beauty now, and as Kate hung the long strands of pasta on our old sweater-drying rack, she told us stories about their renovation, and the kitchen filled with words and laughter.
* * *
—
WHEN WE FINALLY SAT down to eat, there were so many of us it took three tables: one in the living room, one in the dining room, and one in the sunroom—the room we’d finally added on a few years ago, restoring symmetry to the house. We’d opened up that west wall and found the doorframe waiting. The sunroom has walls of multipane windows, just like the old back porch, and French doors that open to the dining room. As I put down a bowl of pasta on the table in the living room, I looked back through the series of rooms, one after another and out to the world beyond. It made me feel like anything was possible.
We ate slowly, course after course, until we could eat no more. Chairs were pushed back, elbows brought forward, conversations lobbed from one room to the next. Old friends rediscovered one another again, while new friendships grew roots. It had been decades since I had sat at a table in Italy and watched a family pass food and affection down its length. I could still remember what it felt like to want that. It had taken a long, long time to build and grow into this space, this house—but in that moment, sitting around our table, it felt as if we had finally come home.
The whole thing reminded me of a tradition practiced by the Zafimaniry people, who live in Madagascar. For the Zafimaniry, a house and a marriage are indeed one thing, and grow together. A couple starts with a bamboo house, built when they agree to marry. Slowly over time, wood takes the place of bamboo, and the house “acquires
bones,” as they say. By the end, the structure is entirely made of wood, decorated, loved right down to the details. The ultimate renovation, a physical embodiment of the care and work it takes to create a home or a relationship.
This is our Zafimaniry house. If you’d told me the day we found it that it would take almost twenty years to get to where I wanted to be, I would have said you were crazy, or perhaps more likely, I’d have run screaming from the mere thought of such an expanse of time. But one of the things an old house can teach you is that time is not the enemy of beauty—in fact, it’s often quite the opposite. Time is what gives a plaster wall its luminous glow and softens the wood of a banister into the shape of your palm. Time is what gets you past the first rush of love and into the parts that actually sustain you. And time gives you the chance to gather perspective, to see your life from the altitude of experience—a blueprint, continually subject to change.
I’m not done with that process; with any luck, none of us are. This is how we move forward—one house, one tradition, one generation at a time. It takes vision and hope and not a little naivete, but in the end, we can make something beautiful. Useful. Strong.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN a long time in the making, growing and changing as I have. It took a crew to renovate our house, and it has taken another one to bring this book to light.
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