The minute we stepped inside the door of our future house, I said “I want this one.”
My realtor asked if I wanted to look upstairs first, and I shrugged and said “Ok, but I still want this one.”
The downstairs of my house is one big room. The kitchen and living room and dining room are not separated in any way, which, for me, means that cooking is not something one person does while shoved into a separate room, a shameful “I’ll be back when these ingredients equal food” place to hide, but rather it’s an integral part of whatever we’re doing. Whoever is making dinner isn’t doing it in a vacuum; we’re all together, quite literally.
I like communal meals. I like communal cooking. I like how it structures our day.
When I walked into our house I saw our big room, and I said, “I want this one.”
****
Rex has an amazing accent.

I recognize that you cannot hear his accent through the picture, but go with me: it is an amazing accent. He is South African turned Canadian turned (almost)American, and I could listen to him talk for hours.
I could also watch him cook for hours. One of my favorite things to do is bankroll a Rex dinner because I know I’ll eat like a king. And sure enough, the result of me musing “Hmm, I wish I knew how to roast a chicken” was a few delightful hours in Eastern Market going through the farmers stalls looking for the exact right chicken, herbs, veggies and flowers for that night’s impromptu meal.
Rex spent a Saturday night talking chicken, wine, Leica cameras and the fun and inexpensive process that is American naturalization (not really).
I looked around my kitchen that night, watching my stepdaughter sous chef and chicken get roasted and wine being poured (for adults only, promise), and I thought: “I want this one”
***
My good friend and I talk often about leaving D.C. “Are we really going to stay here?” we ask. “Is it really worth the hassle?”
To be fair: last week was the wrong week to ask that question. Both our cars were broken into, she’s staring down the barrel of $3000/month of daycare and too little space in her home; my stepdaughter was stuck in the house all week while I worked because she couldn’t go outside by herself.
Oh, so many reasons to leave, to go somewhere with more space, less traffic, cheaper living. The Boss’s work situation is such that we don’t know where we’ll be living in six months. It could just as easily be here as across the country. And we love it, we do, we love the talks at night, dreaming about our life and discussing what we want it to be.
But, here we are. We have such an amazing and wonderful extended family in our friendships, and I look around us all – in my house, around the kitchen, in the park down the street, with kids and dogs falling over themselves, and I think: “I want this one.”
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