Every summer we arrive at the summer house and I do a tour before anything else gets unpacked. Not the excited kind. The cautious kind, where you walk around the perimeter of the house looking at corners and eaves and…
My father’s name is Sakis. He’s the sort of person who will already have his tools out, fixing something, before you’ve even finished telling him what’s wrong with it. Sakis built Maria a wooden toy chest when she was little,…
Let’s begin with what went wrong. It’s a little awkward to admit, but it is the most valuable part of this. If you’re going to be texturing walls for the first time, my error will save you a lot of…
I have a habit of saving things. Cards, notes, messages — the kind that arrive at the right moment and say the thing you didn’t know you needed to hear. I have a message from my mother Zina on my…
I think about this sometimes when I’m moving things around — rearranging a shelf, clearing a surface, deciding what stays and what goes. Most things in our home are replaceable. The sofa could be a different sofa. The rug could…
It’s the same every summer. You get the patio all ready to go with chairs, lights and something for grilling, and at last the temperature is nice. You actually get to sit down for approximately forty-five seconds, and then the…
I talk to my mother every day. Not once. Multiple times. Five calls is a normal Tuesday. Sometimes more if something happens that requires immediate reporting — a thing one of the girls said, something I saw at the market,…
If you are a mother reading this and quietly pinning ideas for what you’d like your children to make you — I see you. I do exactly the same thing. There is no shame in it. We know what will…
I said goodbye to a cactus once. I want to be upfront about this before I start recommending plants to anyone. A cactus. The plant that exists specifically for people who forget to water things. The plant that lives in…
I have a complicated history with faux flowers. For years I was firmly in the real-plants-only camp. The kind of person who looked at a silk flower arrangement and thought: why bother. Real flowers have a smell, a life, an…
