Telling Your Story
The home is you, and you are your home.
This new year of 2022, more than others in recent memory, certainly feels like the opportunity for new beginnings. And a new year, in general, is a good time to take stock, to look ahead, to consider the future.
Instead, my daughter and I plan on hunkering down and reading—and it all has to do with the inside of our home.
First, some backtracking. As you read this, it will have been about two years since the pandemic’s first lockdown; about 35% of Little Bean’s whole life will have been officially lived during a pandemic. If I think too much about this, I’ll go crazy—so, instead, in a new year, there’s value in considering how the interiors of both our lives and our home have changed. And it all began with our first Reading Nook.
Architectural history has long made the distinction between the outside and inside, with one oftentimes having little or nothing to do with the other. (Frank Lloyd Wright and a couple of other architects being the exception.)
To interior designers, however, what your home looks like on the inside is every bit a reflection of the homeowners themselves. Designer and writer Amanda Talbot suggests that design is about “realigning your priorities to keep you focused on the important things in life.” Celebrity designer Nate Berkus’ advice is more direct: “Your home should tell the story of who you are.” In other words, where and how you live is a reflection of you.
Since I fancy myself a storyteller (my wife might use a different word), our own pandemic home renovation started by building a library and reading room in a basement extra room. We stripped the old wallpaper, a job Little Bean seemed to enjoy the most, then painted. Knowing my family was comfortable and safe upstairs as I measured and built the wall of bookshelves over the course of several weeks is one of my more pleasant memories of lockdown. We were going to tell our story, with stories.
Finally, I turned my attention to the library closet, a shallow but long space with a built-in shelf at one end.
When I was a kid, my dad built a walk-in, partially enclosed space in our basement for me, where I stored my books, toy chest, Lincoln Logs and markers. It was chilly down there and damp. But importantly, even more so than my own bedroom, this was my own space, a place I owned and claimed agency to. Although small, it felt like, well, home.
That space was on my mind as removed the doors and tore out the hanger slats from the closet in our house. Those hours I spent reading about robots and ghosts stayed fresh in my mind as I patched the holes and repainted the space. My wife—the true builder in the family—secured a long bench into the nook, sewed a cushion and set up drapes to give our daughter some privacy when she used the room.
This took months, but when it was complete, Little Bean moved in some of her own books, along with an armful of stuffed animal friends.
And finally, after all this effort of creating this new space, my daughter didn’t want to use it.
“I don’t want to be there alone, Daddy.”
“You’re not alone, baby, you have all these books and stories,” I pleaded.
“You come with me. Read to me.” So that was the catch. I had overlooked the most important interior design feature of them all, the one thing I couldn’t build or buy from Home Depot.
It was us. The stories, in our home, in our Reading Nook, would be the people who used them.
That evening, I tucked myself into a reading nook built for a six-year-old, while my daughter sat on my lap and my wife sat in a nearby comfy chair, and we began to read.
We happened to be in a brand-new library, in a brand-new space. But this could be anywhere; over coffee in our kitchen, laying together on propped-up pillows in bed, out back in the sunroom overlooking our garden. The nook was an afterthought.
This was our story. Our home. Together. NHH
BY DAN SZCZESNY | ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLYN VIBBERT
