Learning to Love Where I Came From

Hi everyone…just a heads up that today’s essay is about a 9 on the Heavy scale (ie: it’s personal ❤️), so if you’re not up for this kind of thing, feel free to enjoy the handful of starter bits I have for you before we get into it…

First song by BEA1991 has been a crowd-pleaser on repeat lately; the rest of our A Tiny Apartment playlists are right here, too 🧃.

It’s by Aura Estelle and made in Japan. I like that it has vintage Hermès vibes with a fancy Staples price tag. It also offers blank space for using your planner more as a place to collect ephemera, do some collaging, or add sketches, stickers, etc., ie: scrapbook/journal/everyday dreaming nirvana.

An ATA reader messaged me after our Anti-Shorts Summer Pants story went out last week that these Gap Factory pants were an unlikely standout. For $27.99, I ordered a pair in khaki and black and got both in the Long version (as a 5’9”er, I always appreciate this option). Will report back if they’re as good as she said they are.

We start renovating our Dr.’s Inn next month**, and I had no idea how emo I would be about saying goodbye to the original wood-paneled insides of this 1964 building we’ve been living in for the past six years. My friend Aya has had a soft spot for this place exactly as it is since we bought it, so she’s been staying with us all week and drawing/painting/preserving it for us from different angles/vantage points. I cannot tell you how much this gesture has moved me…and how much I realized I needed these handmade images to take into the next chapter with us. Let this be a reminder to document the different phases of your home, even the strange/ick/awkward ones…you might actually miss them when they’re gone.

Above left, the doctor’s office (ie: Dr.’s Inn ☕️) when we first bought it in 2020; right, what we turned the waiting room into so we could actually live in it while we built the cabin.

So excited for these cute pants to join your closet, Beth (DM incoming!). And now, on w/the show…❤️

A few months ago, I started looking for an essay I wrote in 2017 that was called “When the House You Loved Never Loved You Back.” It was a submission to The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column that prompted the most immediate and seemingly decisive rejection from the editor, who shared, “…this is a little too on the edge of what we do here.”

The first home I made with my family.

At the time, that reply stung. I had spent a month writing about something I’d been avoiding my whole life, even spending a week at an historical writer’s residency working on it, laboring over adjectives and feelings and memories…making it “perfect.” (It never was.) And, then reading it aloud in front of a small crowd of board members and my fellow residency roomies. When the essay was turned away, I might have felt the tiniest bit of relief. Not to share what I’d written, and how much it hurt to even say those words out loud to people I barely knew. I never wanted to hurt anyone by sharing those memories, and the fact that that essay seems to have vanished suspiciously between the cracks of my various lives is telling.

Writing about home is both easy and hard. It is the thing we know best. It is also the thing that knows US best…our secrets, our stories, our dreams to one day leave. For better or worse.