Home is where the thing is

Theres no place like home. Home sweet home. If you had to pick one thing to symbolize your home, what would it be? Before you choose, I don’t mean the people in your home. I mean your home, your stuff. To take a random example, suppose you decided to put everything you own in a shipping container and live in a large box for 8 months. What would symbolize the things you left behind?

I asked myself this question as we packed up our house last September. What made my house a home? Offices are full of stuff but they’re not homes. A hotel bedroom has home furnishings it’s not one either. As my house emptied, I had the idea there would be one crucial object. Packing that one thing away would change everything. Pictures came off of walls, shelves were cleared, cupboards were emptied. I kept waiting for the moment my home would become a building.

One by one I considered and rejected various possessions. Claire’s terracotta fish has hung in our kitchen since she made it at school. It is fabulous to look at and a symbol of her talent. It’s very dear to me, but not the thing. Then I considered our spice cupboard. Joost and I made it together in our first year of marriage. He tried his thumbs at joinery for the first time and I tried mine at carving some letters in wood. Also dear, but also not the thing. What about the toaster? Toast smells so good and toasty in the morning. Or my tape dispenser? I felt like a real adult when I got my tape dispenser. I rejected them all. The house was emptying but I hadn’t had any success. Then I opened the linen cupboard and knew I’d found it.

Although many may not want to admit it, women get a little charge out of a well-stocked linen cupboard. Those stacks of fresh, clean, ironed, scented, and crisply-folded tablecloths and sheets…oooh! It strikes a deep chord within us. Considering the history of women and linens, we shouldn’t blush. I’ve read up on it. For generations, a girls linen cupboard was one of her strongest assets.

There is a whiff of the middle ages in a linen cupboard. Princess or peasant, a girl’s linens were valuable dowry and a bargaining chip in the marriage contract negotiations. However, unlike a title, land, or chickens, a girls linens were uniquely her own. Even if the marriage split up, they remained her own property and she took them away with her. They accompanied her through life and often included the shroud she’d wear at death..

From the time a girl could hold a needle she began preparing her linens. Shuttle, rather – we forget that women also wove their own cloth. Fathers bequeathed looms and linen thread to their daughters in their wills. She decorated her cloth with embroidery, appliqué, crewel, and lace. A husband my be years in the future but a girl would embroider her own initial into her linens and complete the monogram after her betrothal.

The quantity of linens in a household were a sign of wealth. Great houses took pride in having so many linens they rarely needed to wash them. Well into the 19th century, linens were washed only every 6 months. Bins of dirty laundry were kept in the attics until traveling washer women arrived. I wash mine a bit oftener than that but linens can still reflect a household’s pocketbook. My sister-in-law sells luxury linens at her shop in Omaha. High thread count sheets, coordinating placemats and napkins and Egyptian deep-pile bath towels indulge the inner chatelaine. (Here’s a plug, Brandie, www.earlytobed.com)

Nowadays, most of us don’t enter our marriage with a wooden chest of hand-embroidered linens. Luckily, Joost didn’t take my holey sheets into account when he married me. My modest collection is mostly from gifts or I picked them up at garage sales. I do have some napkins with our monogram but that was a lucky find. I haven’t made them myself but treasure them anyway.

So, linens are the thing for me. A man might choose his 103 piece ratchet set. Although less important than historically, they link women and home. Linens aren’t vital to living, but they’re lovely. They make things nice. I admire the skill and diligence a woman puts into a piece of embroidery. I respect the time and devotion in her work. A tablecloth expresses ceremony and care and that’s what you want in a home. When I boxed up my linens, lightening didn’t strike or anything like that but I did sense a change. Suddenly the house echoed unpleasantly. It resembled a hastily vacated shop in a strip mall. It wasn’t my home anymore.

There’s no well-stocked linen cupboard here in Merlin and wash days are almost at 19th century levels. However, we do use my favourite pillowcases and yes, we have a tablecloth.