LIVING LARGE (AND LOW)

I’ve never lived in a basement before; I love light and windows and the idea never appealed. But it seems appropriate now as I finally settle down for a spell that I should be settled deep into the earth, the walls of the foundation forming a low shelf that rings my bedroom and the lovely painted (and heated!) floors uneven and cracked in places where I can see and feel the earth’s shifting, its congress with a house that has stood for more than a century.

This is the house:

It was built in 1903 atop Beacon Hill, just off a thoroughfare with views of the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges on either side. The neighborhood is one I never knew before and though it is sleepy here it’s a short walk down a bridge, alongside highway arterials, to the International District with all its bountiful cabbage and bok choy and from there on into the city. It’s perfect.

The house itself has four upstairs rooms, a mother-in-law studio over the garage, and my own basement suite. Seven of us live here, co-op style, sharing the food and the space, building fires and baking bread. We all feel so lucky to live in this beautiful home with its high ceilings, pine floors, pretty architectural details, and the best kitchen I have ever seen.

The music room

The office/art room

The fire room

(fire enabled)

The kitchen/dining room of your dreams

My basement lair

Tea area and view into office

The grand staircase

There is a calm and a slowness to this house that I have much to learn from. The urgency of books to be read and e-mails to be remains, but it’s easy to forget about all of the screens that demand my attention and drift upstairs to join a conversation or listen to someone at the piano and return to work refreshed. The age of this house and the simple beauty of the spaces makes it easy to imagine all the other ways life was lived here: the niceties of calling cards and parlors and the social claustrophobia of the elite, the circumscribed spheres inhabited by their women, all the fires built and the meals prepared, all the romancing and fighting during the political and sexual upheavals of the second half of the last century.

And there is much more life to be lived in this house, so many hopes and preoccupations to be shared with all the lovely people that are eating and dreaming here now, enjoying the mountains and the fresh air and the ministrations of Zelda the cat.

It’s a good place to be, and a fine place to write. I hope you’ll all come and visit, the kettle’s always on.