Nesting Instinct

Did Cinderella have an overwhelming urge to redecorate the castle as soon as the glass slipper touched her foot?

One of my daughters is moving into a new (to her) house. It was built right after the war by the couple who owned it until my daughter bought it. The husband died at age 98. The house probably hadn’t been redecorated since the 1970s, and no major updates had occurred since then, either. It still had one of those skinny 24 inch apartment stoves. This is good news and bad news. The hardwood floors were pristine under forty-year-old carpets. The doors date from an era when locks were an afterthought.

I got roped into a whirlwind redecorating binge. The floors were sanded and stained. Every room on the ground floor was repainted. A new toilet and vanity slipped into the main bath. The kitchen will probably see new floors, cabinets and counters before the year is out.

On the other hand, while I was in Ireland, I visited a fourteenth century ruin that according to local legend had never been occupied. The original owner, a noble of some sort, didn’t like it because it didn’t face the nearby lake. I can’t imagine why he didn’t just have the architect turn it around as soon as he got down off the rack. The adjoining keep, a medieval panic room, was apparently okay. No one worries about the view while the arrows are flying and the siege engine is rumbling up.

The point is, our home is our castle and our castle is our home. They’d better be right, or we’ll wake up grumpy every morning. But in fiction, this never seems to happen. New residents move into perfect, pristine dwellings or miscreants live in totally trashed hovels. We never find the hero, splattered with latex, hefting a roller while his wife natters on that it wasn’t quite the shade of beige she had in mind. No one is in the middle of pasting wallpaper when the home invasion begins or the cops bust the door down looking for your pot stash.

True, Stephanie Plum’s apartment regularly get trashed, blown up or firebombed, but she doesn’t have to repaint. The landlord or the insurance company miraculously steps in, and all is right with the world.

Perhaps I have a warped worldview. I’ve almost always done my own decorating and repairs. Maybe the other 90 percent of the world has an irrational fear of paintbrushes. I don’t know, but Home Depot is always crowded with people who don’t look at all like contractors to me.

Fiction ought to include other forms of domesticity beyond making coffee and serving dinner. I’d like to hear the sound of a roaring vacuum and the swish of an occasional paintbrush.

Writers, are you listening? Get working on that home improvement chapter.