My husband just bought a garden gnome for our front yard. The importance of this aesthetic decision cannot be overstated.
I grew up in a snobby New England town that looked like the love child between Norman Rockwell and boat shoes—the streets were packed with burly colonists with wraparound porches and tire swings. Swinging from the branches of the ancient oak tree. Each home has gleaming marble countertops and walls in white, beige and oatmeal tones.
in mine In my childhood home, a bathroom was painted royal blue and had an orange mosaic mirror above the sink that my mother had made herself using bathroom tiles. My bedroom is pink and covered in gold sponge painting – my mom’s choice. There is almost no room downstairs for furniture. The room is packed with eclectic art, including a pair of three-foot-long beaded lizards and a ladybug sculpture made from recycled scrap metal.
I always cringe a little when friends come over—as if our hodgepodge of home design proves that my loud Italian-Puerto Rican family doesn’t belong in this WASPy part of Connecticut.
When I was 15, my parents let me move into the attic where I could finally choose my own paint color. After weeks of deliberation, I chose Calla Lily White.
“how Can you? My mother gasped, as if I had betrayed her. Maybe I have. Like any teenager, I needed to rebel, except my rebellion came in the form of escaping my mom’s gaudy aesthetic and emulating the indistinguishable beige houses of my childhood frenemies.
The day I left for college, she waved goodbye with one hand and held a can of lime green paint in the other, desperate to restore my bland teenage bedroom to its intended neon glory.
Five years later, Pinterest was launched and I spent the next ten years reading home design blogs, all of which promised that through the right pastel colors and accessories from Anthropologie, my home would represent me as a certain type of woman : Refined, organized, elegant. Belong to people.
When my husband and I bought our first house, I became obsessed with making it perfect. I hired an interior designer whose work I found through a blogger I admired. She studied my Pinterest boards and within a few weeks created a realistic model of my home, which she calls a “comfortable, versatile family nest with the vibe of a European cafe and British pub.”
The result is everything I dreamed of: a house full of textured neutrals with enough pops of color to look “eclectic.” People always comment on bright plant-filled entrances and moody botanical wallpapers. While I can’t take credit for these choices, I love myself living here.
Of course, when my mother offered to have some childhood stuff shipped to our new house, I told her to keep it all. I don’t need my old collection of sea glass or the flower-shaped mosaic mirror we made together when I was 15—the brass arched mirror I ordered from Rejuvenation will be arriving any day now. I even put the shabby chic chalkboard my husband used to propose to in the back of a closet; its pale blue distressed frame just didn’t fit the vision I had for our home or myself.
Then, last December, my beloved grandmother passed away at the age of 98. messy feeling. Every flat surface is covered with china collections, and the walls are covered with photos of her grandchildren. Still, she was my favorite person, and after her funeral, my family took a leisurely trip back to her house, where we received a stack of color-coded sticky notes. “If you want something,” my mom said, “put a sticky note on it and we’ll put it aside for you.”
To my surprise I wanted to tape everything – the ugly felt door hanging with the words Hahaha! Also carries a little bell that rings when you walk into the house; her collection of bird cups and tacky flower oil shakers. Can I fit her entire sewing closet into my suitcase? Can I transplant her kitchen tablecloth? Those faded yellow flowers were as much a part of her as the ring of red-dyed curls. I can’t imagine it coming from anyone’s brain but her own.
When I returned to Oregon that weekend, I looked around at my over-designed house and felt numb. What is my now seven-year-old daughter trying to save from here? A mass-produced “painting” of an ordinary, faceless woman from West Elm? A wooden vase that can’t hold water? Why do I have so many paintings of other people’s deceased loved ones hanging in my thrift store but not a single family photo? I had been so focused on making sure my house maintained its traditional beauty that I ignored all the stories.
So I called my mother and asked her to send me my collection of sea glass. Now that it has its own shelf in my office, it has inspired me to start collecting again. I went out and bought a really weird print of a Negroni sausage because Negroni is my mother’s last name. My husband usually lets me take the lead on decorating and he even got in on the fun, buying the garden gnomes and all. “I’ve always wanted one,” he told me.
Instead of protesting, I named him Gunter. “Just don’t make our yard look like an old lady lives here,” I warned as we set Gunter down on the edge of the retaining wall, where he hid under a sword fern and interacted with the passing children. Eye level.
“No, of course not,” he said. “he is a Tasteful dwarf. But once Gunter sat down, I noticed he looked a little lonely.
“One more?” Elliot asked.
“Yes, or two,” I replied. “What’s wrong with an old lady’s house?”
Marian Schembari is a writer who lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazines. She has also written about being diagnosed with autism as an adult for Cup of Jo, and her memoir, Less Broken, will be published this September. If you wish, you can book here.
PS Catherine Newman’s fun-filled home tour as 11 readers share their cozy spots at home.
(Photo by Carey Shaw/Stocksy.)
