The House, Final
We bought this house five years ago in February, which means we have now passed the fifth anniversary by some months, and the house is more fully itself in my understanding of it than it was in the first year.
I know which windows stick in summer and which draft in winter. I know the afternoon light in the kitchen comes at a low angle from about three-thirty to five and makes a long rectangle on the kitchen floor that the cat — we got a cat, in November, which was its own decision and the right one — likes to lie in at precisely that time as if he has scheduled it.
I know the guest room is a guest room, which sounds simple, but what I mean is: I know it can be filled and then emptied and it remains itself. The room does not hold what happened in it as a permanent quality. It is a room, and what defines it is what I decide to do with it.
Patricia will visit again. We have already talked about Easter, a one-night stay in the guest room, with arrival on Saturday and departure on Sunday after lunch. She called the Sunday after the January visit to suggest it and I said it sounded nice and we put it in the calendar. She put it in her calendar too and texted me a screenshot as confirmation, which I did not ask her to do and which I took as her own effort at being clear about the agreement.