My story," writes Dominique Browning, the editor in chief of House & Garden, "is about the way a house can express loss, and then bereavement, and then, finally, the rebuilding of a life." Around the House and in the Garden is a moving narrative, culled from Browning's much-loved monthly editorial column, about the solace and sense of self that can be found through tending to one's home. From building a high stone wall in the garden to learning that every kitchen deserves a good kitchen couch, Browning reminds us that making a home is more than just a materialistic endeavor -- it is a way for us to comfort and reinvent ourselves, to "have the final word about what goes where...what feels comfortable, what is life enhancing...and gives us strength to go out and embrace the world.
Cheryl Mendelson author of Home Comforts Dominique Browning describes more eloquently than anyone else how our homes shape and support and change with our lives. She tracks the psychological process of divorce and mourning, acceptance, and renewal as it gets worked through in home and garden -- renovating, cooking, nurturing greenery, child-rearing, and much more. Browning is a superb storyteller, and every chapter has one or two powerful stories about her, her marriage, children, mother, and friends that combine practical domestic detail and human interest. This is a wonderful book.
Sarah Ban Breathnach author of Simple Abundance For years, reading Dominique Browning's column in House & Garden magazine has been one of my monthly pleasures, and I'm delighted that she now has a book. In these pages, she shares her unique and appealing blend of warmth, wit, and domestic wisdom, and the result is moving and personal as well as useful and inspiring. No one knows better than Browning how intimately connected we are to the rooms in which we live, and how a few changes in our houses and gardens can not only alter our mood but change the trajectory of our life.
Jay McInerney author of Bright Lights, Big City and Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar Anyone who has ever owned a house, planted a bulb, or lost a lover should read this book -- a collection of pensées that form a striking, imaginative whole, like the rooms of a well-loved and thoughtfully decorated home. Dominique Browning has written a beautiful, haunting, and inspiring book.
What's It All About?
When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. And so, too, did my house. The rooms looked ravaged, sacked as they were of furniture, art, books, the mementos of a life constructed with someone else; everything fallen into disrepair. For a long time I couldn't bring myself to buy new furniture. I couldn't replaster and repaint; it took too much energy even to consider choosing colors. Except for the children's rooms, I wanted everything to be clean, but empty, redolent of failed love. I was very, very sad. I went through days, months, and maybe even years fully able to be a good mother, and to be a friend, and to work -- in fact, taking comfort in the time-consuming distraction of it as well as in the structure the job's demands gave to my days. It was only my house -- disheveled, lonely-looking, pale, and crumbling -- that showed the symptoms of my uneasiness in my new life.
I am a slowpoke, in some profound ways, and always have been. Some people bounce quickly out of divorce into new relationships, new marriages, and new houses; lucky for them, I say. But it took me years to renovate my attitude, and it was a messy job, proceeding in fits and starts. So there is no chronology in the writing that follows; there was no narrative to my heartbreak or my healing. Just a starting point -- but maybe not even that, as divorce, or any kind of suffering, usually does not seem like the beginning of anything, just the end of something.
Strangely enough, my divorce came through when I was starting a new job as the editor of House & Garden, a magazine about making homes. Nothing in my professional background could have prepared me for this subject; I had worked at magazines like Newsweek and Texas Monthly and Esquire, which, if they have anything to do with home, say so only indirectly. Maybe because I was now making a living thinking about houses, I was more self-conscious about the state of my own home. But because I was so intensely busy with the magazine, I didn't have to press myself actually to do anything about it. I lived vicariously, in other people's tailored, well-appointed rooms, surrounded by their beautiful things. Whatever I was looking for I found in photographs that seemed always to capture domestic perfection. So long as the children were comfortable, I felt free to go my own, slow, meditative way in pulling things back together. My children saw that their house -- one of their houses -- looked strange, but they were graciously, instinctively generous in their acceptance of it.
I began to pay close attention to how people talk about making homes, whether they are decorators, architects, clients, or people like me, who have always done it -- or not -- themselves. I began to appreciate how deeply charged a subject home is; it really is not about chintz as opposed to toile -- or it is that, and much more. We invest our homes with such hope, such dreams, such longing for love, security, a good life -- and stylishness to boot. That's what I have been trying to explore in what follows. Sure, making a home is a materialistic endeavor. But it is often, maybe usually, undertaken with intense spiritual energy.
I cannot say my home healed my heart. But I can say that, as my heart healed, my home reflected it. Perhaps my house forced my hand, at times, with its unrelenting demands. And perhaps at times my heart, gladdened, let me turn my attention homeward. Whatever the strange, looping path I took out of sadness, it wound its way from room to room, like a recurring dream I had as a child, in which I kept looking for something in a cavernous, empty old house, never finding it, but never being able to stop the ceaseless searching, either.
Maybe my subject is yearning; maybe that's the case for most of us. We yearn to live in houses full of love, happiness, passion, and peace, too. We yearn for domestic bliss. Even when we have found it, we are restless about wanting things to be better. As soon as we get what we want, we want more. That's the nature of being alive, of persevering, of striving.
And that is the nature of redecorating.
Copyright © 2002 by Dominique Browning
CONTENTS
WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
WHEN IT WAS OVER
WHO GETS THE HOUSE?
BEDROOM RX
A LIFETIME OF CLOSETS
BUBBLE CATHEDRALS
GARDEN PATHS
OLD GARDEN
THE CHOSEN FAMILY
TAKE A SEAT
LOST AND FOUND
HOME ALONE
RENOVATION ALERT
COUCH THERAPY
LIGHT MY FIRE
SKI TRIP
TREE HUGGER
THE NEW HOUSE
FOR THE BIRDS
ARMCHAIR LOVE
SMELL THE ROSES
THE PIANO
THAT DAMNED DINING ROOM AGAIN
SACRED ORDINARY
REPAIRS NEVER END
PATCHWORK
BERMUDA TRIANGLE
BED RIDDANCE
MOTHER'S DAY
WHAT'S MISSING
UNPAVING
SHARING
STONE WALLS
BLOODY MURDER
DOING THE DISHES
CAFé
THE EMPTY NEST
SILENT NIGHT
THE NEW WIFE
LETTING GO
HONEY, I'M HOME!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dominique Browning is the editor in chief of House & Garden. She lives in New York with her two teenage sons.
Publisher: Scribner
Distributor: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 03-25-2003
Pages: 208
Measurements: 8.44in X 5.5in X 5.985oz
