How does this work? Each week you’ll see one reader’s answer to the previous week’s question. Then you’ll see the question they have for the list, which you can respond to if you’d like. Or you can just read and enjoy.
Previous ask:
Where is home for you, and what makes a particular city, country or community feel like home?
Emily answers:
I've had a few homes: I grew up in Leeds (UK); studied in Cambridge, Bristol, and Washington DC; nursed grief and wrote up my PhD in a Welsh village; and now commute into Oxford from a small north-Oxfordshire town. I've lived on fairytale Cambridge college corridors; with friends, with semi-strangers, with couples who've proceeded to stage ugly relationship breakdowns (not my favourite); and tragically with one housemate who died by suicide in our home.
But the one that feels most like a home, constructed on purpose and with love, was the first (and last) place that my partner Nick and I rented together for just the two of us, after the death of our housemate. It was a first-floor flat above a gift-shop in a creaky high-ceilinged Victorian building. Our own front door and staircase, a big airy living room, a tiny kitchen in which we learned to dance around each other while cooking, and a bedroom that felt like our own. We had lived there for three and a half years when Nick was killed in an accident. The flat continued to exist, and I continued to exist in it, clinging vaguely to the vestiges of our life. But not only could I not afford the rent on one income — there was too much pain in the trappings of our home around us, when the only thing that really made it so for me was missing and never coming back. I moved away, because I had to, but the cosy clatter of the two of us in that little kitchen and a companionable slump into each other on the too-small, saggy old red sofa are still what I really think of as the essential ingredients of home.
Emily asks:
What's the most interesting thing you can see, from wherever you're writing your reply from?
If you’d like to answer this question, you can simply hit reply to this email and write it in. Be sure to also include a question that you’d like to submit next. And tell us a story — your answer will be the bulk of the next newsletter. We will only use your first name, but if you wish to answer anonymously, let us know.
Bits and Pieces
From time to time, I’ll throw some updates, links, and other notes at the bottom of the newsletter.
Some things that have helped me, in various ways, over the last couple weeks. Maybe they’ll help you too.
Nina.
Really informative piece about police and protests and efforts to control how police respond.
It only took about 20 years, but this week I realized that the chord progression for two of my favorite songs of all time are almost exactly the same. Sweet Wanomi vs. Dress Sexy At My Funeral.
The surfer protest.