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It is the eighth Friday of my ten-week sabbatical. Of these, I have spent three abroad, and five at home.

When I say home, I really mean it. If I have not been out walking the dog, or shopping, or visiting a friend, I have been home.

Home, the physical space, and the people, animals and plants in it, are my safe place. There is so much that happens within these walls.

If my brain needs action, I turn the sofa into a reading and therapy spot, where the book and the sunlamp are the therapeutic tools. Otherwise, I turn the dining table, or the desktop in the studio into a research space, with books, laptops connected to internet and physical notepads and pens to write down the found answers to questions that pop in my head, about dogs, or business strategies, about happiness or grammatical rules of languages I study.

When my hands need an adventure, I transform a corner of the space into a workshop. I paint, or I color. Or I put a puzzle together. Or I make a handcraft with leftover materials like old newspaper pages, or wine corks.

If I am feeling social, or someone feels like visiting us, the living room turns into a bar, or a room of board games. We play, we drink, we chat, we laugh and sometimes, we fight. We philosophize over cards from sets from The School of Life, bought in the bookstore during one of my outings.

When I feel like moving a bit, if I have already walked the dog, I clean and organize here and there. I turn myself into a housekeeper. But if I need to move and sweat and lose my breath, I turn on the TV, and cast a YouTube video from fitnessblender or popsugar. I lay out my yoga mat on the floor, I put on my sports clothes, turning my living room into a gym.

If I feel both hungry and caring, I will find a new recipe online or in my scarce recipe notebook, and so I turn my kitchen into a cooking studio. I will chop with care, and mix with intention, and I’ll watch the oven with eagerness as my dish comes to life. I will set the table and transform the small room into a restaurant, with set cutlery, and unmatched glasses and bottles of wine, fruits, dessert, and if I am feeling corny, I will also light some candles.

In the mornings, the place feels like a cafeteria, where we ask each other what type of coffee we want, and we will all want to be the amateur baristas for the day, playing with the coffee machine settings, foaming the milk, tapping the coffee grounds, watching the syrupy coffee brew into the handmade coffee cup brought from Venezuela, waking in me memories and feelings of nostalgia and longing.

When I fall ill, the bedroom will transform itself into a recovery room. Hot cups of various liquids spread across the night tables, next to medicines, natural or highly chemical and sedative, thermometers and cold compresses, extra bed sheets, and warm socks. Perhaps a dirty glass of yogurt or kefir to counteract the effects of the ibuprofen or lack of appetite.

A few Sundays a year I will feel like extra pampering myself and will turn the bathroom into a spa. I will have a sauna session, and experiment with different facial masks, and creams and lotions. In there, I will carefully apply to each centimetre of my body a handful of coconut oil to moisturise my skin, specially dry in winter.

At times, I remind myself that not every corner of these rooms belong to me, and I remind myself that every month we pay for the price to add another square centimetre to our ownership. I will remind myself that we did not buy the place with the idea of living in it forever. Because forever we will not live. We bought it with the practical thought in mind of not sending our money into an empty hole with every monthly payment of rent.

But mostly I think that if not financially, emotionally this place, and the relationships I get to build from within it, have been the best investments of my life. I think about it especially on Sundays, when I sit in my living room and I watch the sun move from left to right, shining through each wall window and I realize, I live a happy life.

Happy Friday,
Maria 🌺

Postscript:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvxCb8iHIss/?utm_source=ig_embed

Originally published at https://marialasprilla.wordpress.com on December 27, 2019.