burning down the house

this weekend was a good exercise in remaining calm in the face of conflict or natural disaster or the happenstance of the walls collapsing around you with no way out. it is kind of funny given that i was already planning on writing about my apartment in this post, i feel that after yesterday, however, this blog will have taken a decidedly different turn than i first intended.

i am house proud and not ashamed of it.

i remember someone once telling me my parents were house proud as if they were low down dirty thieves or something, people who dared to steal others possessions in the dead of night for their own gain or as if they were poseurs, squatting in some life that they didn't deserve or worse, hadn't earned. i hadn't even heard the term before. it sounded strange to me, like an obvious thing to be. why was it being said with a sneer? a house, and moreover a home, is something to be proud of, especially if you own it. you've earned it, brought it up like a child. in the case of my parents most of their homes were raised from the depths of their imagination, each door position chosen carefully, each window placed to the maximum effect. i have several vivid memories of my parents at the dining room table poring over blueprints for their next house. there was always a next house. i didn't know it then but they were the earliest version of house flippers. before that nutty ocd guy on bravo who yells at everyone and those two married nuts with 7 children on bravo who don't seem to yell enough. my parents were seen as nutty, but they had a mission and we as a family were on the wild ride, freely purchased ticket or not.

i have personally lived in three homes with my parents. those being homes we owned. that does not count the various apartments, bungalows and cottages, a term i apply loosely here, that we moved into every summer for the rental season. each may i would pack up my things, all of them, save the framed pictures on the walls, into boxes and store them in the attic. i have said goodbye and hello and goodbye and hello again to many things, tchotchkes, blankets, clothing, stuffed animals, beds, pillows, door frames, favorite backyard hangouts. i have done this dance with my things for as long as i can remember. but i am not sad about it or angry. when i was younger i didn't understand the trade we were making. now i see what saying goodbye and hello again was able to get us. my family was given, or i should say my parents gave us, new cultures, tastes, experiences, languages, dreams for things we didn't yet know existed, a future. my undergraduate degree was paid for with goodbyes and hellos. my relationship with the italian side of my family, all of whom live half a world away, was built with goodbyes and hellos. but i still can't help but love my things.

perhaps it is because i had to pack and unpack for so many years, or because, as jessica once told me, i am "a lover of beautiful things placed in a beautiful way," that i now cherish each and every object in my apartment. they are my oject d'arte. my beautiful things. my personality transferred into iron and wood, fabric and ink.

i took offense to the house proud comment and the spirit in which it was said. the person was saying that my parents cared too much about their things, the home they built from the ground up, the baby they had imagined in blueprinted paper labeled with that great architectural allcaps handwriting that says this bathroom will be both functional and beautiful. my father especially used to yell at me a lot for not taking care of my things. for leaving my bed unmade and my clothes on one side of the bed in a pile (full disclosure: this is a bad habit that i have to this day, although i try to keep said clothes confined to a chair in my bedroom). he said it showed that i didn't appreciate the things i was given. that i didn't understand the labor and struggle those clothes represented. he once got so mad (and he is a particularly calm man) that he took all of the items and threw them out the front door onto the brick and lawn. i thought to myself that before they were on my clean bedspread, now they are dirty, laying out in the elements, in the dirt. but his point stuck with me. i knew i would never take my home for granted. that i would take care of the things that i surrounded myself with.

my father, as fathers are wont to do, used to tell me stories about his own childhood during moments in my own to demonstrate his point. when i used to complain about the yearly ant invasion or a rogue spider, he regaled me with stories about how when he was a child he wouldn't go to the bathroom at night for fear that he would step on thousands of cockroaches. that his daily shower ritual turned into a fight to the death with gargantuan water bugs the likes of which i could never imagine. he told me these stories in an effort to make me appreciate that said small spider was nothing comparatively. however, he would still call my mother in to kill it.

i was haunted by these stories growing up. but not for the reasons that you think. the cockroaches and water bugs disgusted me yes, but they were a far away nightmare in a far away city from a far away time. they haunted me because they were from a past i would never fully comprehend. experiences that were so far from my day to day that as a child i could only mumble an apology for the struggles of my father and his two bedroom apartment, one bathroom, 7 people, 4 brothers and 3-to-a-bed childhood. but this (and the equally humbling story of my mother's childhood) is for another post.

knowing the stories of my parents. what they grew up without and how far they have come, shaped me even if i myself didn't have those same struggles. i never had to put myself through high school, or buy my own clothes, suffer the close quarter living of a brooklyn apartment or the lax personal boundaries of a large family. but i knew the effects of all of these things. and i knew how to combat them, if that is indeed what one wanted to do. i was raised with a work ethic and common sense. i was raised to appreciate everything i was given and everything that i earned, because it wasn't a right. it is never a right, but a product of earned effort.

i joke that i grew up in a museum.

in part because the house was always "being shown" and in part because my father is a neat-nic (a product of his childhood presumably amongst dust and junk and the items of 7 people in a two bedroom apartment), there was a museum quality to the look of my house. add in my parents penchant for antique furniture, rugs and decor and the place looked like a showroom. but it was always comfortable. i was never told not to touch anything or was yelled at for spilling something, unless i was expressly told i wasn't allowed to eat the red sauce on the white couch and then did so anyway. i was allowed to have food and drinks in my room and we were never a 'no shoes' house, a concept which both my parents catalogue under ridiculous. my father, for all of his annoying cleanliness faults lives by the philosophy of 'never let your stuff run your life'.

of all the weirdo axioms he has passed on to me in my 30 years, i am learning this may be one of the top five. much to the amusement of my parents, i am house proud. when i moved into my own place in october i decided i wasn't moving again until it was into a house or apartment i owned. this would be my place, my home, my space to make my own. it would be comfortable and welcoming and homey. all the things i loved about my parent's home, but with my own style and most likely more dust bunnies.

i have succeeded in this effort. i knew that i had succeeded last weekend when jessica's friend lauren who had never seen my place, sat on my chair, curled her legs under her, took a sip from her glass of wine and declared that my apartment looked like an anthropologie catalogue. and i took it as a compliment because everything in my entire apartment probably costs what one dresser does at that store. my parents also seem to like it, bemused by my yelling at them to make the bed when they visit. although my father thinks that it is weird i like to decorate in the style of furniture he grew up with, that the objects he remembers as cheap alternatives to the fancy, unattainable ideal, are now considered "cool." i don't know about cool, i told him, i just know what i like.

i also like the way lauren said what she did--comfortably lounged on my furniture--as much as what she said, because we can't let our things dictate our lifestyle. at no other time was this phrase made true than last night during the first paragraph referenced events. as devin and nichole and i sat back to enjoy some sunday afternoon wine and chit-chat, the day disintegrated into a series of accidental assaults on my furniture and decor. first red wine was spilled on my beloved cream shag carpet, a carpet that took me two years to find. a half hour of seltzer, oxyclean and 22 wine soaked dishtowels later, the stain seemed to disappear. we pulled up the rug, but the assault continued. there was bbq sauce on pillows, blankets and my upholstered chair. i remained calm but incredulous as to how the klutziness could have continued for so long. i think the wine helped. by the time michael, who joined the party at some point, spilled his entire juice based cocktail on himself and my couch i just laughed it off. they kept asking if i was okay. all of them apologized profusely and seemed to be waiting for me to explode and make them leave. but i think i was impervious to the destruction. sure the lack of attention to not spilling things on my beloved items was frustrating, but we are just humans. i was and am one of the most spastically klutzy people i know. things happen. it is just stuff. and even though i love it, it is all replaceable. what is not are the memories of devin, nichole and i in the seconds after the wine was spilled. all three of us splayed on the floor, trying to triage the wound and bring my beloved shag back to its former glory. devin, as always, was assuredly hopeful; nichole, as always, was sensitively sweet; and as for myself, i just shook my head, lightly laughing as i surveyed the apartment i had decorated with such beautiful things, my apartment of the anthropologie catalogue beauty, and it was in that moment, surrounded by my friends, spilled wine and laughter, that it was most definitely a home.