Home Sweet Home
Mt. Victoria. It’s one of the city’s most fortunate neighborhoods with afternoon sun and a swarm of bars and entertainment at the bottom of the hill. This is the view from my front porch. Every morning at the beginning of my commute, I start here. At the base of Marjoriebanks St., where Courtney Place begins, there will be a 25 cent rental bike that I can hire for 15 minutes to cycle across town, along the waterfront, past the National Library and the Treasury Department to arrive at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
After 6 months of temporary office housing RBNZ employees move back, in March, to the Reserve Bank’s official home across the street from the Beehive (executive building), parliamentary houses and just a few floors above the Ministry of Defense.
Standard package work spaces feature a record three monitors and converts to a standing desk with the push of a button. I am allocated a space with panoramic style windows that feature a relatively uninterrupted 7th story view of Wellington’s back hillsides and bay views. I didn’t think would enjoy the persistent rainfall here but get it feels like such a treat to be able to count the number of directions the rain blows. 5 different directions at any one time on a rough day sounds pretty standard and straight down is rarely the case.
It appears to be a pretty sweet deal but its actually just the icing on the cake. Just 1 week before my office move another set of doors opened when I was invited to join a new household of people in a new house at the top of the Mt. Vic hill. It was both an encouraging and nerve-wracking experience. Trade-offs and life changing hypothetical scenarios took up way too much space in my head and as the need for commitment closed in, I struggled find any confidence in what I was doing.
For 8 months I adjusted to a completely independent and minimalist living situation but I sensed that this household would sit on the opposite end of that spectrum. I almost let the opportunity pass because of cold feet but I took the leap. I gave notice to my Mt. Cook flatmates, won an impulse bid for a full bedroom set on TradeMe and spent the weekend prematurely moving future. From the decision point to my first night in the new flat, it all took place in about 10 days.
A confident version of myself would have just buried myself in enthusiasm at turn of fate that just took place. My actual self though couldn’t help but tip-toe with uncertainty and I struggled to convince myself that I could live up the aspirations of the group. But I was welcomed with open arms and inundated with a bouquet of new experiences.
For starters, this old house is the most beautiful of homes. It becomes the first time in my adult life that I have a bed frame with matching furniture pieces and decorative accessories to make my room homey. My bathroom facilities have been upgraded from vinyl to tile and I get to boast about contained shower cube, a claw foot tub, and a view of the city from the toilet if I so choose to open the window.
Physically, I get to basque in the multitude of kitchen amenities- like our mini island, walk-in pantry, microwave, double oven, and gas stove and general cuteness. Functionally, I get to see for the first time an entire kitchen system organised around plastic reduction and sustainable sourcing. A healthy compost system with earthworms galore absorb all the food scraps in the backyard where there are more garden grown herbs than I can hope to remember. It all gives way to another new reality that without food scraps, the trash never gets stinky and it takes more than 2 months for the four of us to produce a full trash can for the landfill!
With the sharing of dinner duty it becomes a new normal to come home to a warm plate of very healthy homemade food. Hearty bread, apple butter, pear vinegar, halloumi cheese, its all homemade! It is both exciting and daunting to be part of a household that is vegetarian in practice and pushing the needle toward vegan. If left to my own devices I would have no hope of demystifying vegan but I am as intrigued as I am intimidated. So the pantry is filled with next level ingredients like barley, molasses, nutritional and active yeasts, 5 different types of flour; and someday I hope to stop treating it like Narnia’s closet. Given that my cooking is both statistically and psychologically predisposed to chaos, the prospect of devising dinner for four each week was, is, and may always be, a significant undertaking in my book.
Luckily, after a variety of hack jobs and one maimed finger later my first flat dinner turned out to be quite tasty. In that first week, dinner time discussions seemed to glide through fervent lessons in current events, environmental crisis, forecasts of consequences around climate change and the magnitudes of trash and chemical pollution — all my favorite subjects! Specially made vegan brownies and good vibes dimmed that initial deer in the headlights reaction and I started to take comfort in all the blessings that were taking shape around me.
Over time and all of the sudden we each find a million little connections that reinforce our relationships and glue us together as a flat. As Summer transitions into Fall, we all adjust to the new rhythm.
As a flat we partake in tiny house dates, share yogi sessions and starter lessons in crochet. We test out homemade deodorants and challenge the value of shampoo. We rally around Star Wars hype and then gawk at all the awesome details after seeing The Empire Strikes Back in concert. Another Sunday afternoon is spent picking olives from the rows of olive trees that line our neighborhood’s streets. I learn how to brine olives and we set them up to cure in Narnia’s closet next to the kombucha and scoby jar.
As it turns out, I now have the kind of flatmates that opt to wait until 9 o’clock at night for me to get home to watch the final episodes of Game of Thrones, a day and a half after the internet has exploded with spoilers. Sunday night movies and mid-week ice cream parties are standard features of this household.
With this wrapper of positivity we even manage to laugh about the low points. Instead of dwelling on what could have been a monumental disaster, I can smile when I reminisce about the blessing of this little flat family that will stand up in sync in the middle of a fully attended theater production, in the most inopportune of moments and the most unprepared of mental states to shepherd me to safety after becoming existentially sick while waiting far too long for Godot to get it together.
I’m not sure if its karma or fate but it seems to fit just right. So hats off, lighters up and cheers to this cheesy little dream come true. This is my version of home sweet home these days.
