By Valerie Andrews
Dear Reader, This issue is about the healing power of home—how we learn to carry it within, as a source of love and hope. This is my story, and like all good tales, it begins with a sudden hardship and ends with an unexpected blessing.
Last year, I moved from my little cottage in the redwoods to a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian with my partner, Russ. We had been planning this move for two years; in that time, I’d viewed close to 100 houses. When we finally found the right one, I hadn’t slept through the night for months. I’d lost 30 pounds and my hands shook like the dowager’s on Downton Abbey. My vision was blurry and my whole electrical system was out of whack. When I touched a cell phone, my arms tingled, and as I underwent an MRI, I performed a Tarantella, my arms flailing uncontrollably.
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s, I wondered if I could manage a big house with three vertiginous stories and a master bedroom somewhere in the Alps. With the onset of brain fog, I couldn’t recreate my favorite recipes. Gardening also proved impossible—trimming the hedges brought on tremors, and I nearly fainted in the August sun.
The number of people with Parkinson’s is expected to increase by nearly 120 percent by 2050, and there are many new medical advances on the horizon. For now, however, self-care remains the most important factor in managing the disease. In the months ahead, I would combat the fear, anxiety, and depression that accompany this diagnosis, with meditation, visualization, and yoga breathing. I learned to diminish my tremors with boxing and plenty of aerobic exercise—fast walking was ideal, using a set of trekking poles for balance and support. Long hours at the computer were replaced by time at the piano. (Fortunately, my hands do not shake when playing a Brahms Intermezzo, or a Chopin Waltz).
Nature played her role as well. In the morning, I explored our historic neighborhood lined with graceful sycamore trees or hiked to the top of the hill for a view of the San Francisco Bay. On lazy afternoons, I took tea on the front porch, watching people stroll by with an array of dogs—poodles, boxers, German shepherds, labs, dachshunds, and Scotties. Nourished by my surroundings, I began to feel at home in my body once again.
Many things can trigger Parkinson’s. Relentless deadlines and a lifelong pattern of overwork had set off mine. But another, more surprising, factor was my unrequited love affair with home. When looking at houses, I fall in love too easily. On the first walk-through, I imagine how my life would unfold in every room, where I might find a quiet place to write or play the piano, and where I’d like to put the dining table—the center of good food and conversation. When a good house slips from my grasp, it feels as though I’ve lost a valued friend or family member.
As a child, I had been uprooted every other year, from one city to the next, continuing that pattern through adulthood. With each relocation, I longed for our first house, the one that nurtured my spirit and fed my imagination. It was a modest place, but we had a grand piano and a long dining room table where I could write stories or draw to my heart’s content. For the first years of my life, I was fortunate to have this kind of sanctuary. And I have been trying to recreate this hive of creativity and comfort ever since.
For me, finding a place to live is an act of faith. First, I make a list of my needs (a space for sleeping, writing, reading, and playing the piano). Then I light a candle and thank the gods in advance for favoring my move. This approach has worked well—within 24 hours, I have always found the perfect place: My brownstone in Greenwich Village, the loft in a converted mill in Western Massachusetts, and my Georgian apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay all appeared as if by magic. But this time, my ritual was ineffective, and the gods deaf to my pleas.
While Russ remained steady and undaunted, I grew desperate as one home after another slipped from our grasp. Home was no longer a place of comfort. It was an open wound.
What helped me cope? Over time, I realized that home is more than a place to live—it’s who we are in the marrow of our bones. The poet Maya Angelou left home at age 16 after suffering from domestic violence and abuse. Years later, she wrote to her daughter: “I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears, and the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.” Yes, the body provides a record of where we lived, who we’ve loved, what we hoped for, and our ability to make peace with what we got instead. Talking to that body, loving it, re-homing it—that’s what gives us comfort.
There is no such thing as a “forever home,” Only the long process of homecoming—our lifetime history of finding gratitude, community, and self-acceptance, in the wake of suffering, disappointment, and self-doubt. We are all long for a place that helps us to honor our dreams, forgive our shortcomings, and hold on to our most cherished hopes. But this kind of haven isn’t something we can purchase, ready-made. It’s something we must build within ourselves.
Parkinson’s has taught me that home is a process of re-grounding. Of standing by our values, and affirming who we are. We might spend our whole lives searching for a home—only to discover that it’s been there, deep inside us, all along.
Home is where we discover a sense of possibility. I learned this is as I delved into the history of our 125-year-old Victorian. Constructed by the shipping and lumber magnate Robert Dollar, it burned to the ground in 1996, in a four-alarm fire that made headlines in The San Francisco Chronicle. The house was then rebuilt according to the original plans. It now has high ceilings and spacious rooms that speak of Old World elegance—along with new paint, modern plumbing, and up-to-date appliances. Each day, I walk through layers of time. The three fireplaces have marble hearths and hand-carved mantels typical of the Victorian age. The crown moulding is a work of art—a medallion on the living room ceiling is ornate, and the plaster so fresh it resembles the frosting on a wedding cake. Like the phoenix, a house can rise up from the ashes. And with god’s grace, so can we.
With the right medication, a strong exercise program, and prayer (yes, lots of prayer), I have regained a good deal of my strength and stamina. The shaking has subsided–and returns only when I’m under stress. I can have a normal life—if only I remember to take things slow.
This summer, we welcomed our old friends and hosted a piano salon. As I re-entered the world, I had to pace myself and keep things simple.
Over the past year, I have come to view housekeeping as a way of tending to the body. That old saying, now, seems to ring true: Home is where the heart is. It gives us the courage to endure when nothing in our lives seems familiar or secure.
And now you know why Reinventing Home has been missing from your inbox for the last year. This magazine has been an exciting venture in non-profit journalism—during the pandemic, it provided a much-needed forum to explore our expanded lives at home. Now we bring this publication to a close with a final issue on finding our home in art, in the family, and in the cosmos.
In They Always Had Paris, our East Coast correspondent Sara Evans describes The Club, a home away from home for women artists who flocked to Paris for painting and drawing lessons in the early 1900s. These talented young women were charged twice the tuition as the men and had little left over for their daily upkeep. Most went hungry, or lived without heat or hot water—all in the name of Inspiration. Until a generous benefactor gave them a place of their own.
In Heaven in Her Hands, Sara talks with the renowned New York jeweler Donna Distefano whose latest collection is inspired by Dante’s Paradise and “the love that moves the Sun and the other stars.” This story explores the role of beauty in our daily lives as a link to the divine. Sara has been our East Coast editor, extraordinaire, for the past five years.
This issue of Reinventing Home also introduces a new writer—Frank Calderale—with a lot to say about fatherhood and the sense of place we pass down through the generations. I hope you enjoy his brief memoir, Always Coming Home.
Our West Coast contributor, L. John Harris provides a gripping art mystery in Searching for the Girl in the Red Hat. After finding a 1935 painting on the streets of Paris, John spent a decade researching and writing about The Girl. She has brought magic—as well as a little wistfulness—into his life.
Two years ago, we introduced you to Ruth Gendler’s Book of Qualities. Since then, Ruth has produced The Town of Qualities, a collection of mezzotints and musings on the nature of Delight, Dread, Humility, and Strength, among other human traits. We are pleased to introduce her latest work.
Another RH contributor, Cliff Hakim, called my attention to Chiharu Shiota’s exhibit at ICA in Boston: Home Less Home. This Japanese-born artist now lives and works in Berlin, producing large-scale installations that evoke our modern sense of rootlessness and dislocation. Shiota considers our many reasons for moving, and for taking only the bare essentials when we go.
Journalist Farwa Ali reviews the documentary Wrestling the Angel, about the beloved Berkeley painter, illustrator, and tilemaker Ann Arnold. Diagnosed with breast cancer, Arnold decides not to fight the illness, but to live with it and listen to it—through her art. Her sumptuous depictions of figs and pears, walnuts and tomatoes, remind us of the miracles of daily life.
Also in this issue: New poems from Edward Dougherty (Forsythia) and Renee Ruderman (The Balcony) about finding solace in the rhythms of nature.
From our archives, we’ve chosen an article on affordable homes for lower and middle-class families. In Modern Housing, Harvey Smith and Susan Ives from The Living New Deal in Berkeley, review subsidized homes built in the U.S. and Europe after WWII. Clean, attractive, and centrally located, these projects fostered a strong sense of community and belonging.
Finally, we present excerpts from two books about our changing ideas of home.
Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home (2023) is a collection of essays by psychologists, scientists, historians, and poets on our need for a safe haven. In this issue, we present a conversation with storyteller and mythologist Phil Cousineau on Homecoming from Homer to the Wizard of Oz.
My latest book—Our Story of Home: Tales of Longing and Belonging—explores the role home has played for some of our greatest writers. Jane Austen’s plots unfold in the confines of an English drawing room; Herman Melville’s desk in Massachusetts faced a hill in the shape of a whale; Virginia Woolf’s novels were meditations on domestic life; Toni Morrison viewed home as the place to wrestle with salvation; the Celtic bard John O’Donohue was enchanted by firelight; and Mary Oliver describes building a miniature house from scraps, crafting it as carefully as she would a poem.
These essays also consider the comforts of domestic life, from a cat’s purr to compatibility at the kitchen table and the role of music in the home. In addition, you’ll learn how our dwellings are likely to transform as we adapt to climate change and new technology. By your copy now from Amazon.
It has been a privilege to have this extended dialogue on the nature of home. I’m grateful to our benefactors and supporters—as well as our webmaster Māris Švirksts, who has made our archive accessible online. If you’ve missed some of our issues, you can access them all on our website.
And now I bid a fond farewell to our readers, with heartfelt thanks for your support and for sharing your own experiences of Reinventing Home.
