Room For a Fresh Start

“We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.” -Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

September 16 2012, Washington, DC: I had the good fortune to spend last week in several of the rooms I love, tightly clutching summer's end before it inevitably slipped out of grasp. I meant to write in those rooms, but I read instead. As voraciously as one reads on a beach vacation, I read sensational summer stories that whisked me far from the sunlit rooms in which I sat. On a screened porch in Southport, in a nook by the window in New York City, and back home in a bright corner of a Washington apartment, I grew immersed in a spirited plot that transported me to another era.

My favorite rooms encourage experiences like that one. They are expansive, not confining. They invite us to take time and space to enjoy. They are well lit and warm. They are full of windows and they welcome escape.

My favorite rooms are getting darker earlier in the evening these days. Cool air blows in through open windows as a new season begins. My favorite rooms welcome these changes. They are spaces that invite us to turn the page. They give us room for a fresh start.