Home

I enjoyed getting back into Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series last summer, so I had every intention of reading Home, the last one I hadn’t read, in fall 2024. But it’s been sitting around, waiting for me to return. Perhaps this is the perfect moment.

We’ve had a break from all the heat waves; the first week of August was uncannily mild. Sixty degrees in the morning, some days not breaking 80. We took our baby to the shore:

It was also a break from house prep. Once a year, we pay a trusted company to do a deep clean, to reset us and give us an organized baseline to return to. We called them in this week. They have a punny name I both love and hate to say out loud.

I’ve been paying for mowing and weeding the front and back yard. Generally this is my task, but abdominal surgery and unsafe heat have kept me away, for this season at least.

Finally, the yard looked inviting again, less wild. Baby and I hung out in the shade after 5 p.m. one day because the fresh air calmed us both.

Today, Baby slept in so I read more of Home. It absolutely nails the sense of Sundays in the childhood home of a big family. The narrator, Glory, is a lost 38-year-old visiting her father in the home she grew up in, when the most wayward child of the family also moves back in. It perfectly captures that hard-to-name state of being an adult back at the house you grew up in, wondering what role you play now.

She made biscuits and brownies. She went out to the garden and picked young spinach, enough to fill the colander, pressed down and flowing over, as her father would say. And Jack slept. And her father slept. And the day passed quietly, with those sweet savors rising.

When she walked in from the garden the house had already begun to smell like Sunday. It brought tears to her eyes. That old orderliness, aloof from all disruption.
— from Home by Marilynne Robinson

I have an ongoing obsession with seeing old pianos disposed of when one family moves out. Those things are nearly impossible to transport or give away, let alone sell. My neighborhood is in a generational transition—folks who bought their homes in the 1970s are downsizing and selling to younger buyers—and I see this all the time:

All of that said, I find that I love being The Host House now. (And our life hack for hosting big gatherings is to host small gatherings more often, so the house gets cleaned and reset in little ways. Are we crazy for this? MAYBE!)

The official day was three months ago, but my spouse hit a milestone birthday and we finally gathered his friend group to celebrate him:

I made exactly three Etsy purchases to have a little fun with it:

Sundays have been so cozy. I prep my meals for the in-person days at my job, and puree produce from the garden or the farmers market for our baby. He loves fruit puree in ice pop form. He eats berries and peaches and bananas every day — as well as homemade chicken broth, mashed potatoes, and scrambled eggs.