A Well-Made Home

At half-past midlife, my friends Alex and Lee have had their share of troubles. Alex has just finished up a bout of radiation to rid her body of a tumor. Lee’s disabled sister spends every summer living in their adjoining guesthouse. One aging parent is stricken with dementia. Yet just stepping through the door of Alex and Lee’s house is enough to make me relax. Everything about the home they’ve made together radiates a sense of joyful vitality. Since they have no children or grandkids, Alex and Lee have poured their everyday passions and lifelong hankerings into their vintage Craftsman bungalow, a treasure trove of welcome for their many friends.

To walk into their home, with its soothing earth-toned walls, vintage wainscoting, and built-in period architectural details, is to sink into a world made by two people who leave very little to chance and mistake. But it’s Alex and Lee’s experiences, rather than merely their good taste in decorating, that greet me at the threshold. The house records their history. It reflects them and their love for each other. Each wall displays some idiosyncratic bit of artwork or folkloric object collected from their many trips together. Shrines of travel memorabilia seem to sprout in every corner. An antique filigree frame surrounds a circular engraving from a Portuguese antique shop. Photos of Lulu, their oversized Labrador retriever whose golden coat has faded to buttery beige, take up much of the oak hardwood hallway connecting living room and kitchen. Lulu is one of the beloved features of this home—the canine vestal of its hearth.

Lulu’s tail wags in time to the soft ticking of an oak grandfather’s clock that once belonged to Lee’s grandfather (the grandfather’s grandfather clock). Liberated from long imprisonment in layers of paint, the early-nineteenth-century timepiece is a gleaming showpiece of Lee’s refinishing skills. Over the fireplace, a long wide mantel shows off a collection of round objects, not random, and not overly tidy and fussy. A handsome cluster of spheres made of marble, alabaster, and antique wood form a soothing texture for the eyes and hands.

I couldn’t resist asking Lee the secret of their home. She told me, simply, “We wanted a place to come home to, to feel comfortable and yet playful in. We wanted to make it beautiful, yet not too serious.” Hence the 150-year-old French bowling ball that sits on the floor at the hearth. You see it there and you think, Well, of course.

The pantry gleams with floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with jams, jellies, and pickles they’ve made during the last season. Fruit ripens perpetually at the kitchen window, usually citrus or some of the remarkable tomatoes Lee grows in her garden and transforms into jam and chutney. The couple loves to cook together, and manage it without too much arguing, so invariably their homemade condiments find their way into the holiday baskets of lucky friends.

On my last visit, the back gardens were heavy with heirloom tomatoes, fat red bell peppers, and a tree festooned with persimmons. Lee herded me to a seat at the long granite kitchen counter and put a glass of wine into my hand, saying, “There you go dearie.” (She always calls me dearie.) It was autumn, and she was deep into the persimmon harvest, making the puddings and dried fruit leather they would enjoy year-round. When she’s immersed in her fruit alchemy, Lee’s usual uniform of colorful cotton blouses and skinny jeans are discarded in favor of loose khakis and a sweatshirt the exact color of her blue eyes.

“Can I help?” I aimed my remark in the direction of the kitchen, though I knew Lee would shoo me away.

“Just enjoy the wine,” Alex said, coming in from the garden with three fat potatoes in her calloused hands. She nodded in the direction of the wine.

“How do you like that Syrah? It’s from our first harvest,” she said proudly.

Lee and Alex joined a vineyard co-op a few years back and are proudly bottling their own handiwork.

Before I realized where the time went—I tend to let go of mundane pressures like time and appointments when I visit them—the food was on the table. I can still taste the almost indescribable vitality of the freshly dug Yukon Gold potatoes I had for dinner that night at their table. Simply steamed with butter and salt, they made me remember the whole point of growing your own food.

Whenever I am at Alex and Lee’s house, I’m convinced that at-homeness is possible. I feel surrounded by the care and regard they feel for each other, and at the same time, welcomed into their life together. I keep trying to put my finger on their secret, on that core reason why being with them feeds my soul. Good friends, friends who can truly invite you in and spend time, create nothing less than a sanctuary. I find myself gravitating toward Alex and Lee’s hearth whenever I need some nurturing.