The first of May, a new month. I could write about Easter, which has just passed, about Liberation day in Italy which was last week, about the Festa del lavoro, which is today… I could write about yet another beautiful Spring… but I won’t, I will write about houses, one of my favourite topics, which is why I do what I do, I suppose.
Have you ever thought about how much a house is transformed by whoever lives in it? How much personality, tastes, fashions are reflected in the style of a house? Not just the furniture but the wall paper, wall colour, choice of bathrooms, kitchen, even the layout of the rooms… And dreams and wishes, and disappointments and fears…. All projected in something or another in the four walls you live in. Have you ever walked into a house and felt oppressed for no particular reason, or felt “what a funny house!” or “what peace!”?
How eloquently houses speak!!
Some stand brave and proud looking out onto the street in front of them; some hide shyly behind trees on a side dirt track, flat roof terraces for romantic aperitifs at sunset, private hidden courtyards for roaming chickens and family gatherings, statues and azaleas and pools… they say volumes, houses do. Front rooms only used for special occasions, kitchens full of smells and children, scary cellars, attics full of memories and magic. A piano playing upstairs, the cars driving past the windows...
Have you ever thought how the house you grew up in must have reflected on who you became because of it? It’s a two sided effect: the house gives back what it has been given, and particularly if you are a child, you absorb.
I grew up in South Africa and lived in several houses before moving to Nigeria and then to Italy… house after house, each one of them defined me in some way…
I suppose I would consider my childhood house the first one I remember, in Blairgowrie Drive.
It was a bungalow with a rectangular front garden with drive way to the side and a paved back area with a pool. A modest house, with its rock garden and bird bath and a patio area nobody ever used. We had a spacious living room with a TV which was kept in a wooden cupboard to be opened for those few hours a day when programs were broadcast, but mainly it was the room where a big white sheet was hung on a wall at weekends, a hired projector propped up on a few magazines, and we watched movies lying on the floor. What fun and excitement! There was a dining room, a little bar which lead onto the pool area, a kitchen where I remember my nanny making Saza. There were three bedrooms: our bedroom with a big glass facade onto the front garden, our parents slept next door and had an en-suite and the guest room opposite ours with a big wooden bed I used to jump on singing songs and listening to fairy tales on my plastic record player. When granny came to stay this is where she slept. What do I remember most of this house? I remember crying when my dog died. I remember learning to swim. I remember sitting on the jasmine bush at the end of drive writing who knows what, waiting for my father to get home from work. I remember my grandmother telling me to be more grateful. I remember my nanny telling me I wasn’t white and she wasn’t black: that in fact I was pink and she was brown and that there were no rules about that, were there? I remember barbecues and parties. I remember the big flood when water gushed into the house through the doors and the furniture was floating and my father went looking for my little baby sister.
There’s really no way of saying how your childhood environment translates to your space as an adult. What did that house teach me with its big glass windows and pretty garden? To be open minded, that things don’t always work out they way you want them to, to be grateful, that family sticks together in moments of need, that those who care aren’t always those who cover you with attention, that nothing stays the same and that things inevitably change.