secretpost #1: Houses on Hills

circa summer 2023: reflections on healed ambition

During the past summer, I’ve been living on a house on a hill. It’s a very nice house, it has a cozy living room with a fireplace, a lively sunroom that’s perfect for reading, and a lovely little guest bedroom with lilac curtains, bedsheets, and feathery stuffed pillows.

Days here are filled with tea and chocolate biscuits. Walking and jogging with the dog. Conversations with family and friends over good food and white wine served over tables fitted with floral placemats. I am in Northern Ireland, my boyfriend’s childhood home, and to me… a surprising paradise.

I stare out at the window; it’s raining. Sprawling green and wheat fields peppered with dark green forests of pine stretch out till they meet a blue horizon. Some sheep are grazing under a tree while their lambs run. I observe them from a cozy red leather armchair covered with a blanket decorated with crocheted images of deer with enormous branchy antlers. Do you know that C.S. Lewis was based in Northern Ireland and that this was his inspiration for Narnia? From where I’m sitting, I totally get where he was coming from.

I yearned to be great beyond all expectations, when really, all I wanted was to feel included at a high school party.

I told myself I wanted the world, when all I needed was a peaceful summer spent on a pretty little house, on a pretty little hill.