I have been trying to count how many houses I have lived in in my 75 years. It’s a lot. We moved around often during my childhood for my father’s work — in olden times families always lived near where the breadwinner could win bread. It was the same when I grew up and got married.
My plan for my adult life was to stay in one house forever. Best-laid plans. In 1974, we moved into a grand house that I loved and where I hoped to raise my children, and be carried out in a box. Actually, when we moved from there, I thought I’d have to be carried out kicking and screaming. In fact, I walked out calmly and, just as I did every morning, I loaded my children and the neighbors’ in the car, dropped them off at their schools, and went to work and never went back. Probably the saddest day of my life.
I loved that house not for itself so much as for the grove of redwoods in sat in. I touched and thanked each one of them before I left. Took some of their cones with me. My oldest daughter cut off a piece of her bedroom curtains to keep and took the brass key to turn on the gas to the fireplace in that room.
Now, I am living in, as it turns out, my very favorite house. It is small and modest and very beautiful and twenty years ago when I moved here, I began planting a grove of redwoods. The first, with Elizabeth’s help. The last with a friend’s. They have grown so tall now that I no longer have a view of Mount Hood from my upstairs window.
In this house, I have one of my two favorite rooms ever.
My first favorite room was in Healdton Oklahoma, cobbled together by my mother and father from a tiny sort of porch-lean-to in a rental house on Magnolia Street. The upper part of the outside wall was open and covered by screening that had a sort of flap over it. To open the flap, you went out and propped it open with an old broom stick. It was kept open all summer. Sometimes, it blew shut, and that was pretty scary. Some nights a wandering group of horses came to drink from a big water bucket kept right outside. Lots of slurping.
It was nice and cool in there in the summer. In the wintertime, my parents closed the flap and insulated that wall with rags and cardboard. I loved lying in my little bed against a wall there and reading.
From that beginning, I have always been drawn to tiny rooms and seem to settle into the smallest room in whichever house to sit and read or do desk work or handwork. Here at 1880, I call that room “The Snug.” I think it is beautiful. Lots of time in there is spent on my laptop, writing.
I don’t have pictures of a lot of the houses I have lived in. I found this one online of what I think must have been the house on Magnolia. Maybe not. I’m surprised it’s still standing. It was pretty ramshackle 70 years ago.
The porch was wooden then and there was no sidewalk. There used to be a lilac bush in the driveway. I remember sitting in the driveway in one of those canvas sling-backed beach chairs reading to Mother. And here is a picture of me on the porch all dressed for church and reading or writing something while I wait.
I remember distinctly that that sundress was navy blue and my French braids were so tight they hurt. I think that’s the lilac bush over to the left. Those are nasturtiums on the right of the steps that Mother planted. I still love nasturtiums. And small rooms. And small houses.
