The space we live in shapes us as much as we shape it.

Take my house, for example.

It was built in 1949. It is less than 900 square feet, the kitchen is slightly less than 8 feet square. Structurally, it has not been touched since it was completed. The stove and fridge were replaced sometime in the early 70's; I painted the hallway for the first time in 50 years just a few weeks ago. As it has remained untouched, so have the rhythms of life within its walls.

I wash the dishes by hand, same as whoever owned the house when it was new. I wait the same frustratingly long time for hot water from the boiler that's located two blocks away. I don't blow my hair dry, or curl it with a curling iron, because there are no outlets in the bathroom.

Washing dishes is a meditation on modern life and its throwbacks, washing the floors is musing upon a floor that is still beautiful 53 years after it was laid. I eat local fruits and vegetables in season, and in the wintertime I wear a sweater because the wind oozes in around the casements.

Yet, there are differences. If the kitchen is the heart of the house, the second bedroom, my office, is the brain. More computing power in one place that existed in the whole world 25 years ago. And I am different than anyone else who has lived in in this house--there has never been a single woman living here, to my knowledge. And I'll bet that nobody who ever lived here had a tattoo, or a nipple piercing.

So much of my life is molded by this space. It is my refuge, my place of quiet. I don't mind doing dishes by hand; I enjoy the smell of freshly laundered white dishtowels, the feel of the cloth rubbing across a perfectly clean, warm plate. I've given into my nesting urges since I've lived here; I spend Saturdays looking at paint chips or sitting down on yet another chair to see if it's comfortable.

I actually own an apron now. My former non-domestic self would quail at this, but it's really useful when I'm cooking to cleaning and need to keep my clothes clean.

These little things--the way the stairs creak, the feel of cotton against my skin--all of these things cast me in a role that I unexpectedly embrace. What make the difference for me is that I am doing these things for myself and no other. I thought, when I was younger, that doing a housewife's work would consign me to an existence that I had no taste for, the dry, dull place that seemed to be the lot of my mother and my friends' mothers. (Later, I learned that many of these women had rich private lives, if only inside of their heads.)

But doing these things for myself, I find myself loving the work because I love the product of the work. No longer content just to be comforted by a warm, clean house, I am comforted by the process, the putting in order, the organizing, the washing. It makes me feel good, to do this. Not because I am driven towards perfection, but because, very simply, if feels good. It makes me feel as if I have some control over something in my life, and that is by no means a small comfort.

and I set in my offing, among the detrius of a thousand projects that I have going, and I realize this: I am happy. I am doing what I want to be doing.

And that, for the moment, is enough.

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