Assignment 3: 37 Hyde Park Gate

The flat at 37 Hyde Park Gate has become my home, but out of necessity, not out of love. I suppose it’s perfectly adequate: I can live relatively comfortably. I don’t mind sharing with 20 other girls, despite the occasional annoyances that come with cramming so many individuals into a narrow, confined space. The living areas are comfortable, when they’re warm enough to be habitable. Most of the door handles and light switches usually work. None of the cracks in the plaster leak water, at least not in any important parts of the building. When the fridges spontaneously turn off, we usually find out before much gets spoiled. I have gotten used to the strange noises that occur when the cold water is turned on, and I can generally jump out of the way in time to avoid being frozen or scalded when the shower gremlin decides to get playful.

Really, though, it’s a fine flat. The location couldn’t be better, and it’s functional, and I’ve become comfortable here. Flying back from Dublin last weekend, I caught myself thinking, I can’t wait to get home. Home. When did I start thinking of London as home? It’s a wonderful thing, changing homes, but I can’t help but compare this new home to my old one, the one that’s waiting for me an ocean away. That home is a fortress of brick and stone, designed by my mother to be perfect. From the Tudor-style front to the gothic windows overlooking the lake, from the copper roof accents to my custom-built koi pond, that house is perfect. I was just getting ready to finish middle school when we broke ground in 2004. The old house and land had belonged to my grandparents for 50 years. They needed to downsize, and we needed to upsize from the lakeside flat my parents had built into their downtown office space, so we traded. We knocked down the old red house my mother and uncle had grown up in, leaving the floor and the fireplaces. The old house was transformed in a year into a beautiful customized space, a home my mother had been dreaming of for decades, piecing together like a collage. She picked up ideas and objects in Europe, poured over books and magazines for inspiration, and just made up what she couldn’t find. The results are incredible, a building that is more than a building, a home I am proud to call home.

Even the yard is perfect. My grandmother began most of the gardens years ago, and my grandfather carted in wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of black soil from Price County, where the best dirt grows. In the front, five oak trees grow from a single base right in the center of the property. My grandfather, who knows about such things, believes that a century ago, when the land was a farm, a big red oak tree had been cut down to a stump, and from that stump had arisen five little sprouts. Today those little sprouts are huge trees. A long time ago, my grandfather carved a sign to hang at the mouth of the driveway: Five Oaks. Over time many gardens have sprung up on our property, tended first my grandmother and great grandmother, then by my mother, and now by me. Nothing brings me more joy than playing in the dirt of my gardens. I could never imagine life without mud and trowels and worms and wonderful, growing plants…until now. 

An ocean away from my gardens, I miss them. Here, I have nothing to weed, nothing to water, nothing to tend. I have seriously considered passing myself off as a legitimate gardener in Hyde Park across the road, but I have a feeling the Queen would frown on such activity. I tried to content myself with wandering through the park and other gardens as much as possible, but looking at other people’s gardens just isn’t the same. There is no sense of pride or accomplishment. Finally I gave in. I found a little corner greenhouse when I was lost in Camden Town a few weeks ago, and purchased a bright pink cyclamen. I watched every window in 37 Hyde Park Gate before deciding on the perfect ledge for my precious plant. The kitchen was far too dark, and the East windows all had heaters below, bad conditions for a flowering cyclamen, which needs very cool air and dry soil while it flowers. Eventually I decided on a low window where the light isn’t quite perfect, but at least there’s no blasted space heater to ruin the blooms. Unfortunately for me, the maids decided to "help" me tend my little plant, help that was not only unwanted but also detrimental to my poor cyclamen. At first I couldn’t understand why the once hot pink flowers were turning white and deformed, but then I realized that the maids had decided to “help” me by watering my little plant vigorously every day. The poor thing was drowning! A polite note has halted the flood, so I can only hope my cyclamen will perk up soon.

The little cyclamen has made me feel so much more comfortable in this flat that is otherwise so devoid of anything I would associate with a home. It gives me not only the joy of it’s pretty flowers, but also the satisfaction that only comes from tending a living thing. Silly as it sounds, I don’t think 37 Hyde Park Gate would be a real home to me without the pink cyclamen. I’ve decided that I just can’t leave my little charge here when I return home, so my plan is to stress the poor thing horrifically with heat and darkness in the weeks before I pack, sending it into forced hibernation. Cyclamens are wonderful plants that can retreat into their bulb-like tubers to wait out bad times, sprouting again when the conditions are perfect, reminding me of the great oaks growing in front of my Wisconsin home. Unlike the oak tree, when my cyclamen hibernates, I'll be able to slip it into my pocket and carry it across the Atlantic, where it will grow next to my other cyclamens, in the bay window overlooking the five oaks.