Bedroom, Not Office

Stache was on the phone with HRFP the other day, weighing in on our plan to turn one of the bedrooms into HRFP's home office.

"You could just put a smaller bed in there," Stache said. "So someone could still sleep in it."

"That's true," HRFP said carefully, in the tone of a man who has just realized his home office dream might be interfering with Stache’s idea of home.

We recently renovated our home adding an en suite to one bedroom, and adding two more bedrooms and a bathroom in the basement. HRFP and I now live in a seven-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath house. The two of us.

Once or twice a year, everyone comes home, usually around the holidays, and every kid gets their own bedroom with minimal bathroom sharing. It's great. The other ten or so months, it's a lot of empty beds.

We've never been sentimental about keeping kids' rooms as shrines to their childhoods. No one's twin bed is preserved under glass. But apparently it’s a bridge too far to say "we're putting a desk where you sleep." Even if you only sleep there twice a year. Even if you never technically lived in the room.

The idea of home is a big theme in my Blue Lake series. The tension between the people who live in the town year-round and the people who are just there for the summer. Stache doesn’t live here anymore but he still wants to know there’s room for him. Now excuse me while I go make up the bed in that room.