The first night my girlfriend and I spent in our new abode, I was so excited about decorating it. When I sat perched upon the kitchen bench with her and her best friend, it wasn’t our sparse unfurnished rooms I saw. The empty dining room with its white walls was, in my mind, the setting of lavish dinner parties and sophisticated mood lighting. The dining table and chairs that had been donated to us were mere starter furniture, to get us through. In my mind, I saw a house to rival the images on the pages of the home style magazines that I have been devouring since I can’t remember when. I was impatient to get started and couldn’t wait to create my dream home.
There were a number of factors that I didn’t count on. One, that my idea of a dream home was not the same as my lovers’. When we fall in love and think about building a life with someone, we rarely think about whether or not they think that a blue feature wall will go with terracotta coloured tiles. Then you’re faced with the decision; which is more important- having a home that you feel is impeccable or having a relationship in which you support your lovers’ idea of a beautiful home too. Needless to say, the blue feature wall stayed. It might not be my idea of home decorating but it makes my girlfriend happy.
And she has been so patient with me…My girlfriend is not a morning person. Sometimes she is not even a lunchtime person. There have been days when she won’t wake up until 1 pm. Usually, I am OK with that. I can watch all the indie films I want without being teased about my taste being boring and having the DVD player hijacked by The Anchor Man. But once we moved into our home, I was more interested in IKEA than independent film and I woke her up as soon as it was 9am every Saturday morning to go shopping.
As we spent weekend after weekend driving up and down Main Street, Osborne Park looking for the perfect lounge suite at the perfect price, I started to feel dissatisfied. It began to dawn on me that now that we were paying off a mortgage, it wasn’t going to be so easy to satiate my materialistic cravings for the furniture I wanted. Eventually, we bought some beautiful wooden bookshelves made by women in Indonesia. My immediate thought was to go out and buy a rug to match. “Why don’t you just try to enjoy what we have?†my girlfriend asked me.
Why didn’t I? Why did I need everything right then and there to be perfect, the way it was when I envisaged it that first night? I suppose that having wished for something my whole life (my own home) and having fought so hard to obtain it, I wasn’t about to let it go. But letting go is exactly what I needed to do. There isn’t much point in racing ahead when it comes to building a home because it’s not only what goes in it that matters.
Like ageing a wine, a home needs to marinate in memories. It’s not that I’ll forget my sense of style or that I’ve decided that the furniture we put into it doesn’t matter. It’s that taking the time to relax and feel comfortable in my new house is equally important. A home isn’t just a house filled with beautiful objects. It’s also your sanctuary; a place where you can just be.
Maya Muir
