
My neighbor, good friend, and mother of two boys under age four, walked into my house several weeks ago and muttered, "You have art now?" As if to say that I've upped the ante somehow in our pointless quest to live in houses out of the pages of Martha Stewart and Potterybarn. And if I really had spent the boys' non-existent college fund on a high fallutin painting that didn't mean anything other than to say, "I HAVE ART," then maybe the comment would have made me feel guilty.
But no, I took it as a huge complement, because the painting in my entryway (and the one pictured below) were painted by my talented friend and kindred spirit June Steckler. She made it just for me, for my house. And if it screams I've arrived, so be it. Because I have. Not to some Silicon Valley idealized sense of success, but to this space of my life. It hasn't been pretty, but having survived the first three years of motherhood, a remodel, a second child, and life with a husband, I really can't say it better than this line from my favorite poem:
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
--David Whyte, The House of Belonging
So thank you, thank you June for making my home more complete with your beautiful art--my house of belonging. I look at it everyday and see the divine in you.























