When I first found our Alice In Wonderland house online, years before we actually bought it, I sent screenshots over to Francesca, and while we tried to figure out a way for me to buy it we developed elaborate fantasies about how the house would become a sort of creative salon-in-the-woods, with friends staying over and making music late into the night. We pictured glamorous outfits and fairy lights and clinking glasses; aged cheese and good wine and watching the sun come up while someone banged away on a piano. I think confetti might have been involved.
Our home – our life – does not look like that. Not even close. There are very few things capable of keeping me away from my bed post-9PM (on New Year’s Eve, I literally celebrated with a little dance when the clock hit 12:01 and I was permitted to make my exit), sparkly dresses have exited stage left in favor of beat-up slippers and my favorite college sweatshirt, and a truly excellent hot chocolate has replaced that last glass of wine (you know, the one that will end up hurting the next day) as the go-to late-night beverage of choice. It was a fantasy that didn’t fit with our real life, and so it was one I was willing to let go.
On New Year’s Eve, Francesca drove in from her family’s place in New Jersey and stayed over, and then she and Kendrick spent the morning co-writing a song for her new album in our living room while I cooked potato hash and lasagna and Indy played with his dinosaurs, which meant that all of us spent the day in our happy place. At one point they were working on the hook and they asked me what I thought, and I came up with a couple of lines. In the afternoon, Kendrick and Indy drew while Francesca chopped spinach and I looked for another record to put on. We ate huge plates of brownies, and played Kendrick’s new bongo drum.
When I went to bed that night, I thought about looking at those screenshots with Francesca all those years ago…and I realized that it happened: our salon. It took me a minute, though, because it didn’t look like what I’d imagined at all: the sun was up, there was garlic bread on the table, all four of us were in pajamas with unbrushed hair, and more than one take had to be cut short because little hands wanted that piano cover closed right now, please. And yet it was just what I’d dreamed of: sitting with my best friends around a piano, laughing and eating and making things together; all of us Musicians and Chefs and Writers and Dinosaur-Wranglers, all at the same time.
It may not be the story I had in my head…but I think I like this one even better.
