Infusing Heart into the Hearth of the Home
"There is no reason, either in prose or in rhyme, why a whole house should not be a poem." Ella Church Rodman
With any luck, your Mothers Day weekend was as wonderful as was mine. As one day cannot hold the full celebration, the holiday has been elevatedin my family anywayto the entire weekend. It starts on Thursday night and extends til midnight on Sunday. Extra lounging in an excusable indulgence, as is extra chocolate, extra newspaper perusing, and extra sleep.
And if thats not quite enough, in this section of Connecticut where we make our home, kitchen tours have been perfectly calibrated to Mothers Day weekend, and so I became happily transplanted to two different townswith a third this coming weekall in the name of Happy Mothers Day. Call it wonderful coincidence or perfect event planning: celebrating the hearth gets to us mothers hearts whether we like it or not.
These tours, quite spectacular in every imaginable way, go beyond the familiar house tour offered by many historical societies or trusts for historic preservation in cities across the country. They zoom in specifically on the most honored room in the house: the kitchen. Architects and kitchen designers stand for the duration of the tour, beaming with pride over the perfectly appointed rooms they have created for their clients. As they should. Most of the work is exquisite and deserves recognition.
And recognize we patrons did in full force. Attended by hundreds of would-be renovators scourging the tour for ideas, curiosity seekers anxious to see what the next-door neighbor has been up to, professionals simply checking out the competition, and HGTV and Food Network junkies by the truckloads, the kitchens on tour scratch our collective itch.
As a wannabe kitchen renovator (my oven is falling apart, my fridge door hardly stays shut and my stove is on its last leg), I had a strong desire to see what folks are doing in kitchens around my neck of the woods. Granted, Fairfield County, Connecticut can be a rather daunting neck to grasp; the most difficult part is simply getting my brain wrapped around the scope of the kitchens on tour. For were not talking merely ripping up vinyl flooring and replacing it with hardwood here. Were talking six burner professional ranges, imported marble countertops, double Sub Zeros, handmade tile backsplashes and handpainted friezes. Copper countertops and double-wide limestone farm sinks. Trips to Europewith interior designer in towin search of that perfect armoire. Or vacations spent trolling through the Paris flea market for the grandest chandelier. One of the homes undertook a four-year renovation; granted, its 10,000 square foot size required a committed team of experts in order to eventually pull it off. But its final resultimpressive, certainlyboggled my mind.
Now, theres certainly nothing wrong with any of these indulgences. We can call it protecting our investment or infusing our home with beauty or doing careful research. The kitchens on tour were, with few exceptions, veritable works of art.
And as a visual artist, I appreciate the need for transformative beauty as much, if not more than, the next person. Indeed, my need to fill my kitchen with things that I love, things that I find beautiful, is a highly motivating adventure for me. Ever in search of wonderful roosters or lamps or linens or candles: Im almost always on the hunt.
But as I tromped through house after house, I remained inspired most by understatement, as always. By the antique and smallish house that didnt scream Look at me! Which spoke to me through its quietly unassuming authenticity. Of wonderful proportions, clean color and organic materials. Of beautiful, yet simple, fabrics. I like things that are gorgeous. But I like them to come at me in the same way that nature does. The earth laughs in flowers, Emerson wrote, and certainly their beauty is inescapable for those willing to slow down long enough to fully appreciate it. But flowers dont scream. They softly persuade. They whisper Come hither.
As I go about the initial steps towards a complete kitchen re-do, I hope I can translate my need for organic beauty to the designer with whom I will eventually work side-by-side. I hope my desire for open shelving, a rather common solution in kitchens across Europe, overrides designers dreams of expansive (and expensive) full-scale cabinetry. I hope that my desire for a glass-doored refrigerator, one which Ive held for more than two decades, is not met with skepticism by well-intentioned planners who worry that childrens fingerprints and messy living habits will intrude on the assumptive need for impeccable order and cleanliness. I hope that my desire to impart my own stamp, through my collections formed over nearly a quarter century of marriage, will not be met with a professionals desire for something less artsy. Or for something that appeals to his or her aesthetic, rather than to mine.
For the one thing I had hoped to see more of in these wonderfully designed kitchens was the owners handprint. Or that of their children. I would have loved to have seen a crumb or two. Or some suggestion that the owners actually cooked there. That dough was, on some days, actually rolled out on the marble countertop and that vegetables were stir-fried on one of those six burners. Indeed, the phrase working kitchen has evolved in order to distinguish between those kitchens which are designed to be merely beautiful versus those in which homeowners actually cook.
Id like to think that some kitchens standfrom decades of use or from recent renovationwhere roasts are basted and hearts are repaired. Where bills are paid and where lunchboxes are packed. Where we value the notion of nurturing: through meals and through conversation. With preparation along with presentation.
Few things tug at our heartstrings as do our kitchens. We have long recognized them as the hearth of the home. Lets just hope that in the real estate frenzyas well as in the overly-consumptive age in which we find ourselvesthat we keep the heart in the hearth of our homes. And that we are able to translate it aesthetically so that our loved ones can benefit. Via fabulous aromas or soothing patterns and color. Through folk art collections or through hand-crafted dinner plates. Through pottery or placemats.
For therein lies the challenge. As always. Infusing the hearth with heart.
Carolina Fernandez earned an M.B.A. and worked at IBM and as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch before coming home to work as a wife and mother of four. She totally re-invented herself along the way. Strong convictions were born about the role of the arts in child development; ten years of homeschooling and raising four kids provide fertile soil for devising creative parenting strategies. These are played out in ROCKET MOM! 7 Strategies To Blast You Into Brilliance. It is widely available online, in bookstores or through 888-476-2493. She writes extensively for a variety of parenting resources and teaches other moms via seminars, workshops, keynotes and monthly meetings of the ROCKET MOM SOCIETY, a sisterhood group she launched to encourage, equip and empower moms for excellence. Please visit http://www.rocketmom.com
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