The Hodgepodge House
It all started with The Wall. Well, it started with a white house with white walls and a chain link fence. The hodgepodgery came later, bit by bit. We painted the house purple, and I made a tree in the living room. But the wall is what led to naming our house like the Brits and building a whole ideology around it.
I would work on the wall almost every night. Neighbors and strangers and soon-to-be-friends would stop by to comment on the wall. They shared their love, their stories of intentionally coming by on their way to their lives, and their offerings for the wall. It started to feel like something more than a wall.
One of my favorite moments was when a family came by while I was working. They spoke very little English, but enough to ask, “Who is the artist?” “Me,” I said with a huge smile, and one of the youngest children asked, “What is your Artist Name?” Like I was famous enough to be just “Nancy,” known the world over. The mom and I laughed so hard.
While I was working on the outside of the Hodgepodge House, I was simultaneously working to make the inside worthy of the name. On the day I created the space door, I put a tarp up across half the kitchen so Ron wouldn’t see it until it was finished. When I heard him come in, I poked my head around the partition and said:
“I need three things from you. One, I need you not to look behind this tarp. Two, I need you to not ask any questions. Three, I need you to be okay with that.”
“Okay. Cool. Can I make a sandwich, though?”
We so get each other.