Home

an ice box for plums, a bed for crisp white sheets, a book shelf for books and a stove for a coffee pot

The rumble of the coffee machine, the smell of brewing coffee.

Back deck sunshine, the newspaper, a book, sitting in quiet with those you love.

Sitting with my grandmother and my mother on the sun-drenched table and window seat that I’ve come and gone from since the day I came into this world, still in our pyjamas at 11am. Nan knits, Mama does her French; soup and scones for lunch. The world feels simple, contentment feels easy.

Uncontrollable laughter with your brother.

Three on a vespa with your sister in Bali — moments of reprieve for us both from weighty life decisions, weighty life moves.

A seat around a dining table with familiar cutlery and napery, with faces who know you like no one else. The rituals and gestures are muscle memory.

Long hugs and long lunches with friends who’ve seen you through long periods of change, through long dance floor sessions, through long drives, long rants and rambles.

An hour going by looking through boxes of old photographs — of your parents on their wedding day or of them before you; of country’s you called home once upon a time; of smiling siblings as little ones; of pets who are no longer among us.

Boxes of clothes that once hung in your room, once identified you; boxes of notes kept, some from your 7th grade boyfriend, some from your last day of work at your first job, some from strangers sharing their favourite places to eat in Marseille.

Streams of light that flow in and light up the home acting as a daily reminder of the beauty that surrounds: the bookshelf, the dining table, the day bed, the rug. But more than objects, the space that we all get to be together in, to invite friends to, to be warm in the winter in and lazy in the summer in.

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Home, it’s such a simple thing in some ways — it’s a house, a city, a country; it’s a book shelf, sheets, a moment at your stove with your wooden spoon and oats bubbling. But equally, it’s something big — it’s people, it’s a feeling in a space, or in a city, it’s a familiar coffee cup or a pot that’s been around as long as you have been, it’s a sense of ease and a sense of being understood. I’ve come to understand that for me, home will never simply be a house — it’s always going to be the people, it’s always going to be the feeling; it’s always going to be something I carry with me. And it will never be just one place, one person, one feeling.

Two and a half years have gone by since I had a space that is mine, since I had a shelf with my books on it, a kitchen with my pots in it, a bed with my sheets on it. And now here I am, creating a place in a city I’ve long wanted to call home: Paris. From my bed, my new crisp white sheets I write.

I buy a century old piece of thick scrummy linen that has been died indigo with plants of the south to drape over my bed; I buy books, two by Deborah Levy, one by Virginia Woolf; I buy glass jars to put almonds and oats in; I buy two candle holders, one white and one indigo blue; I buy a notebook with the words ‘REFAIRE LE MONDE’ stamped across it to scribble in as I repair my world, my home — not that it was broken but I certainly have thoroughly dismantled it these last few years, and along with it, my concept of home; I buy a vacuum. Indigo, white and terracotta are the colours I feel drawn to in my space, to live with — tactile and earthy. Soon I’ll buy a rug and a lamp, frames and a new piece of art. But I don’t want a lot, not yet, not now.

A blank canvas — home, the physical space, but also the way I choose to live in, to live in this city. Rituals, habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, language and humour — it all gets questioned, and it’s fascinating to see what sticks, what goes, what evolves and what appears. A moving and exciting thought; a moving and exciting time.

I look up home, the dictionary gives me: as in residence, the place where one lives; as in country, the place of ones birth, residence or citizenship; as in household, those who live with a family in one house; as in birthplace, a place of origin. Seems so black and white, but the dictionary perhaps does have a habit of simplifying complex and precious matters.

Home; something I feel daunted to write about because there’s so much on home that I’m yet to be able to put words to. But it feels good to have these words here as I move into a new home, as I reconnect with the idea of home and what I want this home to be. As I reconnect with you back here.

One thought is that I do believe that some of the sweetest, most intensely joyful moments in our days are not those in which something overly thrilling, overly wonderful, even overly memorable happen, but just those moments of simple pleasures, often fleeting and often following one another softly, and often, these are moments that happen at home — streams of light; lying in fresh white sheets with a cup of hot coffee and a book that’s taken hold of you; lit candles; sitting around a table; cooking in a kitchen; looking at beauty hung on the wall and letting it stir you; placing fruit in the fruit bowl and flowers in a vase; laying eyes on a bookshelf. Well, I could go on, but perhaps this thought comes back to the thought of the concept of home being simple — a space that stirs you, warms you and brings you soft moments of intense joy.

On that thought, here is a poem on domestic life, on home, that for me, captures the simple joys:

This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

One thing is for sure: a home in Paris — joie intense.

H. X