The Bee Cottage Story

by Frances Schultz

  It was clear and simple. Take responsibility for your circumstances. Own your talents and God-given gifts. Speak your truth.

  Of course I am super-simplifying something that occupies an entire book, but this is the gist: It is possible for disease in the body to begin energetically, in the chakras. Chakras are the body’s energy points representing aspects of our being, from personal safety to self-esteem. Weakening the energy, can weaken the spirit, can weaken the body. The idea that strong self-esteem is good for you is not new news, but Christel’s advice about energetic wellness was not touchy-feely; it was clear and simple. Take responsibility for your circumstances. Own your talents and God-given gifts. Do what you love. Speak your truth.

  Talismans and reminders: The word “authenticity” is taped to my computer, and the laughing Buddha was a gift from a beloved teacher.

  My takeaway was profound excitement that we have energetic blueprints, and that we could live by them, even though it might mean going against the tribe. I had a nagging feeling I wasn’t living my blueprint, and I wanted to do something about it, whatever that meant.

  Meanwhile the situation with G deteriorated. It’s like I was living two lives. There was my spiritual life wherein I felt clear, at peace, and optimistic in my meditation and studies, and my life with G, where I felt confused, inadequate, and at fault for whatever wasn’t going right. But I couldn’t admit that, or the whole thing would fall apart. Which of course it did.

  Subtitled “Thinking outside the tribe to heal your spirit,” Sacred Choices by Christel Nani changed my life.

  After an initial burst of hopefulness with our counseling, things went sideways and then down.

  Christel Nani was conducting a weekend workshop in Albany, and I went. Certainly a part of me was hoping for reassurance that no relationship was perfect and that mine was as okay as any. I was hoping I had not made a shambles of my life, even though it sure felt like one. And if it wasn’t a shambles, well, that wasn’t too good either. How screwed up is that?

  I was impressed with Christel. She was a no-nonsense New Yorker with a credentialed medical background, a sense of humor, and compassion without the kumbayah, to my relief. Near the end of the first day she asked for volunteers to tell her one thing they really loved doing or wanted to do, have, achieve, or change. It had to be something our energy was behind 100 percent. It had to register all the way down to our toes and come all the way back up again, to sail effortlessly through every chakra. It didn’t have to be anything profound. It could be “I really like chocolate.” Sounds easy, right? I was shocked by how many people couldn’t do it.

  I raised my hand. I got this, I thought. I’d just bought Bee Cottage. It was the one thing in my life I felt I knew my way around. So I said, “I want to create a warm, wonderful home and garden where my friends and family can gather.”

  “No . . .” Christel said. Wait, wha . . .? My quizzical, embarrassed look said it for me. She continued, “Do you want to write a book about . . .?” And I interrupted her, if you can believe. She’s about to reveal something really important—the reason I came here—hello?—and I interrupted her. Typical.

  “Well that’s what I do,” I said.

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “I write books and articles and things”

  “Oh,” she said. And that’s all I remember. It sort of ended there. I was completely flustered and felt like a jerk. I don’t know if she was going to say anything about my relationship, but it’s all connected. If you limp around on a sore ankle, eventually your hip starts to hurt, then your back, and so on. Our spiritual health is the same.

  I just didn’t know what to fix. Everything felt broken and I didn’t know where to start.

  Christel’s whole thing is about how tribal beliefs hold us back: Relationships are hard work. Blood is thicker than water. You must earn everything you get. Etc., etc . . . I’m not saying there isn’t validity in all of them, but they are beliefs, not facts, and there’s a difference. I wasn’t in an abusive relationship or a miserable life. I was with a good guy and in a nice life. So what right did I have to complain? Get a grip, I told myself. You’ve got it all. What’s wrong with you?

  Whoever we are, if we are in a situation that is demoralizing, it is ultimately going to be unhealthy as well. Feeling guilty or getting sick isn’t going to make anybody else better, richer, or happier, so what is the point? Serving a tribal belief to our individual detriment is to sacrifice our self-respect.

  The walking on egg shells in my relationship had to end. My fear of anger and disapproval served no one. Staring into space at four in the morning with knots in my stomach was neither healthy nor character-building. And yet I was so paralyzed by the implications of my doubts that I could not acknowledge them.

  Exploring the energy vortexes in Sedona, Arizona. On a hike to the ancient Wind Caves.

  I never got the big “aha” I was hoping for at the workshop, but I did see a new possibility. I made a plan: The next angry impasse G and I came to, I would simply remove myself. Gently but firmly, I would say something like, “We seem to be at tough spot, and we are both upset. I need to be alone now to calm down and collect my thoughts. Afterwards I will be better able to discuss this with you.”

  My chance to try it out came soon enough, and the end came soon after.

  There is never a good time to break up. There is always an element of the surreal about it, and a part of you that can’t believe it is happening. The other part of you puts one foot in front of the other and carries on, while your head and your heart flounder for closure that never truly comes. Lives once shared have a common history that cannot un-happen.

  Watercolor by moi, somewhere in Arizona

  Several months later on a Sunday in October, I was supposed to have dinner with someone a friend wanted me to meet, which I wanted to do about as much as I wanted to go to the dentist. Oy, but you have to start somewhere.

  Six years later I am still having dinner with the handsome guy waiting for me that night at the corner table in La Goulue, but I’ll get to that in a little bit.

  Chapter 13

  Detour

  As if I hadn’t taken enough wrong turns already, I may as well tell you that while I was at it, I also committed to a job I wasn’t right for. I know. It’s almost funny at this point.

  After twenty years of happily writing about design and entertaining for House Beautiful, Veranda, and others; composing several books; doing on-air hosting of Southern Living Presents, and appearing at speaking gigs far and wide, I fizzled. My writing lost its sparkle, and so did I. In thinking I needed a change, I accepted an attractive offer in the fashion business. In the precarious economic environment of 2008, a regular paycheck and benefits—two things I hadn’t had in years—were a compelling attraction, I confess. Besides, I’ve always loved clothes, so why not?

  I am fifty, honey. You’d think I’d have gotten by now the part about following your heart and being true to yourself, but no.

  Well, I love fires too, but that doesn’t mean I should be a fireman.

  Now remember I’m not twenty-five at this point, or even thirty-five. I am fifty, honey. You’d think I’d have gotten by now the part about following your heart and about being true to yourself, but no. My truth was a blur. You might not have known it to look at me—hell, I didn’t know it myself—but I was a mess. I’d gone flat, and it seemed my life had gone flat, too.

  I’m not ashamed of that. We all have bad days, bad years, even. What I’m ashamed of is believing I deserved it. I believed I had deserved it for leaving a good guy, for being dissatisfied with a good job, for stealing a pack of Lifesavers from the Piggly Wiggly when I was seven. You name it. With so many transgressions, how did I possibly deserve happiness?

  Well, where is it written that you must deserve happiness in order to have it? Or that you must earn every single blessing in your life? Precisely nowhere, that’s where. These were my own twisted, albeit unconscious, interpretatio
ns of what Christel Nani would call typical tribal beliefs—something along the lines of Success and happiness must be earned through hardship, and Some mistakes are unforgivable.

  I trusted my grief would ease and my body would mend; it was my spirit that needed healing. And meanwhile, in a village on Long Island, sat a house needing love. The truth is that we needed each other.

  Bianca, my bicycle, parked at Bee Cottage.

  Chapter 14

  How Bee Came to Be

  Away from the honking hustle of New York City, this house, like the one before it, would be a place where I could recover, be creative, be outdoors, be cocooned, be social, be alone, and best of all, be me, just . . . be. And that’s how it got the name Bee Cottage. I like the play on words, and I also like bees, which, after all, are creative, hard-working, focused, social, drawn to beauty in flowers and trees, and have a queen. I like all that. So, I told myself, you’ve survived the big C, the deaths of your closest loved ones, and a public humiliation. You’ve got on your conscience hurting someone you cared about deeply. Now what?

  As children we’d dig holes on the beach, believing if we kept digging we’d get to China. And that’s what I was thinking, I’m about to hit China. But I didn’t. I stayed right where I was. Stop digging and be, honey. Just bee.

  The floorplan as it was, and is.

  Chapter 15

  You Have to Start Somewhere

  Whether you are beginning a new design project or a new life chapter—or both, ahem, as does happen—the hardest part can be taking the first step. You know you have to start somewhere, but where exactly? The short answer is right from where you are.

  Remember when you were in school and took standardized tests? They always said if you came to a question you couldn’t answer, skip it and move on to the next. Same with a puzzle, do the easy parts first. That makes the hard ones much easier to fill in later, and sometimes they fill in themselves. So it is with re-doing a house, and possibly with mending a heart. Start with what you know. I did know I loved this house, so I started with that.

  As with any major undertaking, if you break it into parts, it is considerably more manageable. And in case you missed it the first twenty times I said it, if you begin with what you know, you’ll have a starting point. So here’s what I knew: The nice thing about small, asymmetrical rooms and ceilings you can touch without standing on tiptoe (I’m 5’10”, but still) is that there are only so many ways to go. This house, as the real estate agent kept saying, “is what it is.” That is, a little 1920s East Hampton stucco cottage that had suffered neglect, but not abuse. Previous owners were respectful of the cottage’s modest charms and had done nothing to dampen its cheerful and cozy spirit. So I guess my first decision was to preserve that. No knocking out walls or ceilings or re-arranging the floor plan. We’ll work with what’s here and find a way for it to work with us. And with that, Bee and I were on our way.

  Chapter 16

  First Steps:

  From the Outside In

  Architectural historian Grant Hildebrand talks about buildings offering “prospect” and “refuge,” concepts he says apply even to the humblest of dwellings. Like this one. It seems a vaunted theory for a simple old house, but to understand it is to know immediately why you feel comfortable in one house and uneasy in another. It has nothing to do with the size of the house, but we humans desire areas that offer possibility, views, and the “prospect” of discovery and expansion; while conversely we also need areas in which we feel protected and safe—“refuge.” Lord knows I needed refuge, as do we all at one time or another. In their humble ways, the rooms of Bee Cottage embody these principles of prospect and refuge, hence the house’s intuited good joss—and a way home for my heart.

  The house’s village location was ideal. It would be nice to feel surrounded by people and activity, and I would be less likely to brood. My brooding tendency was high at the time, to say the least, and loneliness was a big gray lump in the middle of every day.

  My former fiancé and I had agreed that a wonderful garden was a priority, and landscape plans were underway almost as soon as the sale closed. I would also add an outdoor living and entertaining space—the better to enjoy the garden. He had not wanted a pool; I had. Calling the garden designer and asking her to put in a pool was a small act of post-breakup defiance that was ever-so-subtly empowering.

  My one-third of an acre of heaven in the village of East Hampton.

  Did I tell you about the time they dug the hole for the pool in the wrong place? Thankfully it was before the concrete was poured.

  How to Begin – Finding Your Vision

  Before you do anything to a house, try to decide how you’re going to live in it. Presumably you have a fairly good idea of your day-to-day habits. List them, if you find it helpful. From waking in the morning until going to bed at night, how do you move through the rooms of your house or apartment, and how do you and your family use them? It might be helpful to keep a log of these activities just to make you aware of them. So much of our behavior is habitual or unconscious that sometimes we find that the perception of it differs from the reality. For example we may think we entertain often, or would like to, but in truth it’s more like twice a year. Plan to organize your space around what you really do, rather than what you think you should do.

  Don’t expect all your ideas to come at once, or all of them to remain in place. Give yourself flexibility, particularly in the planning stages when changes cost nothing.

  Something about the dynamic of the relationship had kept me in don’t-rock-the-boat mode, feeling slightly squelched. Those who know me might not think of me and “squelched” in the same sentence, by the way. So what if an un-squelched me had spoken up earlier in the relationship? What would have happened? Either the relationship would have developed on sounder, stronger footing with two people being true to who and what they were; or it would have ended sooner. Either of which would have been preferable, obviously, to speaking up as late as I did. Not being yourself does no one any favors, especially not you. But I was afraid that myself wasn’t good enough, that my judgment was inferior.

  By coming to an understanding of what was right for my house, I came to a better understanding of what was right for me, period. I believe this is universal, by the way, and the more conscious we are of how we shelter ourselves, both literally and figuratively, the more conscious we are of ourselves.

  A metal chalkboard in the kitchen is used for menus, messages, and silliness.

  The house, just as it was, held lots of appeal. What I wanted was just to make it a better version of itself. In the state I found it, Bee’s exterior stucco was weathered and ivy-strewn, with shutters that were the most wonderful shade of blue. Whoever picked that blue was a genius. What was not to love? Well, I’ll tell you.

  On closer inspection, landscaping in the front comprised all of a scraggly yew hedge, and at the side an overgrown arborvitae arching densely across the driveway, so when you passed through it you felt you might enter a magic forest. Or a money pit. The roof was asbestos and old. The front door was feeble, but its top two panels were the original bull’s-eye glass—charming. The driveway was patchy and weedy.

  Fortunately, estimable garden designer Jane Lappin had a keen sense of the appropriate, which is important in a historic town like East Hampton. Boxwood replaced the yew in an intentionally random-looking arrangement. A low boxwood hedge in front creates a formal frame. Boxwood and ilex hide the hideous gas and electric meters that had to be placed where they could be easily read. Some plans are dictated by aesthetics; others by necessity.

  Because of the pool at the back, the area around it had to be entirely fenced in, which then needed screening, and front and back gates. Two of the three gates have bee cutouts, designed with the help of Jane’s associate Adrienne Woodduck. That same bee design has since been used on linens, stationery, and on my website. When you find a good bee, buzz it, I say.

  Bee Cottage in its original state
, with the shutters whose color I’d feared I couldn’t replicate.

  Window boxes and cottages just go together, and this is a window-box-y house if ever there was one. So, okay, up with the window boxes.

  I hated the expense of replacing the roof, but it was necessary, and the new cedar shake shingles are a world of difference.

  The arborvitae got a serious trim so the workmen could drive their serious trucks by it. The living room windows on that side now let in a lot more light. I had actually liked that overhanging arch, but there you go. The area adjacent is now planted with oakleaf hydrangeas, which are also good as cut flowers to use in the house.

  The garden gate bee design appears also as an appliqué on linens and as a design element on stationery and on FrancesSchultz.com

  There was no way around replacing the front door, although dang I hated losing that bull’s-eye glass . . . So I didn’t. One pane had been broken, but we were able to replace it through a source I found on the Internet. Soon the front door was restored to its good-new-old self, but better. We stained it a dark walnut and coated it with polyurethane to give it polish and gloss, like you see in English townhouses.