The story of a house
and a recipe for happiness
If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.
―Paulo Coelho
In the beauty contest of home buying, we won the lottery.
On the surface, you might not have thought so. There was more to give us pause than to say a wholehearted yes. Quirky colours and Laura Ashley wallpaper. Floors that creaked and groaned and dipped like a tired old lady. A kitchen the size of a postage stamp. No closets in the second and third bedrooms. A grumpy old boiler.
And yet…
A garden with a house attached
The day we met our house for the first time, I didn’t walk in the front door right away. While Richard and our agent went inside, I wound my way to the back of the house.
And I lost my heart in the prettiest secret garden I could imagine.
No gardener I, somehow I understood immediately that this garden would be patient with us, would coax out our imagination, would wrap us in a green embrace that was full of breath and lightness and joy. I knew then, that we would buy this house…no…that the house had chosen us, had decided somehow that we understood its mysteries and idiosyncrasies and deep humming heart.
And it was so.
Cooking up happiness
About that postage-sized kitchen.
As much as we loved the house…painted and papered and put our own imprint on every inch, inside and out, still, there was the matter of that kitchen. It simply wouldn’t do.
There comes an inflection point in every relationship where one must decide whether to stay or go. Houses are no different. Our tastes change, our needs evolve, we want more, or different. But try as we might…we never could find a house that pierced us in quite the same way. In one desultory search after another, we halfhearted wandered through houses with more bedrooms, bigger kitchens, better appliances...and yet, and yet, they only flirted and didn’t fall in love with us at first sight. How could we leave our dear little one behind?
And so we doubled down and added a kitchen worthy of our castle. And, as we somehow knew would happen, the happiness grew exponentially. With every opening of the doors to our loved ones, the energy seeped into the walls and rebounded back out.
Completing the circle
If there's one thing I'm absolutely sure of, it's that a house truly becomes a home when it has a living, purring creature—preferably small, furry, and ginger. I like to think our magical house found Trixie for us, sensing somehow that we needed a perfect being to inhabit every inch of our domain, and be its queen.
Trixie was indeed the queen of our castle, knowing more of its nooks and crannies than we could ever imagine. More than that, she was the queen of our hearts. The circle was complete.
And so it was.
Happiness doesn’t have just one address
But life is funny, and unexpected. Which, when you think about it, is perhaps its greatest gift to us.
Inflection points seem to happen of a moment. I like to think they are the culmination of a longer line of considered events. And so it was with our house. There was no calamity, or lifechanging event, but rather the slow and sure realization that saying goodbye and moving on was part of a continuum, a path that had more to teach us, and give us.
By this time next week, our house will no longer be our own. We already said goodbye to Trixie last year, and slowly, slowly, we are parting ways with the sum of this great house’s parts. The kitchen, the garden, the essence of its bones.
Deep in our hearts, though, the house has a very special room. It is cozy: the fire is lit, Trixie curls up close to catch the warmth, and we curl up too, with a favourite book, feet entangled in a blanket as we stretch out on the sofa. We are always home, no matter where we are.
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So beautiful.
😘