An Evening

Crazy unreal view from their deck. Straight
ahead, right at the base of the tree line, is the
road I take into town.

My mom was just on the island for a week, glazing and firing in the gas kiln at Crow Valley Pottery to get ready for the opening of the Potters Festival. The other night we and our friend Margie were invited to dinner at the home of our friends Mary Jo and Linda. Now, Margie and MJ and Linda are three of my very favorite people on the planet (and my mother, I suppose, should also be counted among the power elite), so after the dinner invitation I didn't think my day could possibly get any better. That is, of course, until I saw their house.

Does this not look like something you'd find
in a home decor magazine?

It is undoubtedly the closest thing to my dream house I've ever seen--possibly even closer than in my dreams. MJ and Linda operate Lone Cow Farm, so they have acres of pastureland for horses and cows. (Inga, the farm's "lone cow," recently died and the animals there now belong to neighbors. MJ and Linda joke that they're changing the spelling to Loan Cow Farm.) Linda bakes incredible wedding cakes and makes jams with berries she picks herself all over the island. She has a special jam kitchen separate from the house.

Their sprawling ranch house sits on the tip-top of a hill overlooking the valley and Fowlers Pond. They have an orchard and a rose garden and a long deck covered with potted plants that runs the length of the house. Swallows have built nests in the eaves and in the dozens of bird houses--one in the shape of a slanted barn, one a re-purposed canteen--hanging on the wall outside. I lost count of the number of guest rooms they have, but each one is more wonderful than the last: framed black-and-white photos and paintings of farm animals; curtain rods made from croquet mallets; vintage posters; lampshades covered with pine cone seeds. They have lofted ceilings and rustic wooden floors, shelf after shelf of cookbooks and plant encyclopedias. They have the greatest greenhouse I've ever seen, and it's inside their house. They have a barn and brightly colored Adirondack chairs and the most pillowy-looking hammock I've ever seen. Above Linda's kitchen is a bunk house with five beds, a bathroom, a kitchenette, a reading nook (I do so love a good reading nook--hell, I even love a mediocre reading nook), and a wood-burning stove. Everything is cozy wood and golden lamp light.

A corner of the bunk house.

It's the kind of house that you can't imagine ever belonging to anyone else, so inextricably linked to its inhabitants that if they ever pass on to the next world (and I firmly believe that's an if--these women are indestructible goddesses) I've no doubt the house will vanish right along with them. You walk in the front door, which doesn't even have a lock, and even though it's not your house you feel like you've finally come home.

One wall of the greenhouse.

We sat on the deck, drinking wine and popping handfuls of warm nuts sauteed with brown sugar and rosemary, crackers with apricot earl grey marmalade and fresh goat cheese from a farm down the road. We wandered through the garden and Linda showed us where they planted a different type of rose bush on the grave of each of their pets. We discussed our favorite public radio programs over lemon pasta with basil. As the sun set, casting a fuchsia tinge on the clouds that promised a thunderstorm that night but never delivered, we ate rhubarb pie and sipped Linda's homemade rhubarb liqueur. We discussed to which remote corner of the universe we would banish Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman and Jodi Arias if only we could. And we laughed: Mary Jo, who loves nothing quite so much as an entertaining story; Linda, whose eyes squint nearly shut when you really get her going; Margie, whose husband passed away several months ago and so her laughter is equal parts guilt that anything in the world could possibly make her smile and relief that something finally has; my mama, with her radiant, maternal smile that you could dedicate the rest of your life to philanthropy in developing countries and never feel you deserve; and me, wishing I could stay in the presence of these four women whom I so admire for the rest of my earthly existence. We all laughed. Five voices erupting into hysterics, but so unified that I believe if you were to drive up the road past their house you would have heard just one--a single, continuous peal of laughter.

In that house, with those people, I stopped feeling like the little girl I'll probably always be: the girl who's afraid to be where she's not wanted, who uses sarcasm and a smile to deflect the fact that loneliness is shredding her up inside. I stopped worrying about what I'll do if I don't get into grad school, or how long it will take me to find a job once I'm home. For one evening I could sit at a kitchen table and quote Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and feel protected and happy and loved. For that evening I was a woman in her dream house.