Rules for Visiting

by Jessica Francis Kane

that would be cinematic. And by that I mean movies make the most of situations like this but life rarely does.

A few variables. Consider the word visit. It’s from the Old French visiter, which meant “to inspect, examine, or afflict.” You can visit a neighbor or a friend, but so can plagues and pestilence.

Years later it was pointed out to me that guardian and garden share a root meaning “safety, enclosure.”

Amber had a talent for friendship, which, I suddenly understood, was something one could be good at, like cooking or singing.

Maybe I should put up a sign? Yes. Let’s all have signs up and down the street announcing our personal disasters and disappointments.

my family tended to use any excuse not to have friends over. Dying would certainly have been at the top of the list.

In the scientific sphere, friendship is defined as time plus intelligence, and only a few species are capable of it: the higher primates, members of the horse family, elephants, cetaceans, and camelids.

felt like a spy who had read a dossier and wasn’t sure what I could reveal.

Emily Post had very high standards for guest rooms and thought every hostess should be obliged to spend twenty-four hours now and then in her own to better understand its strengths and deficiencies.

More impressive were the soft mosses and other lichens that were growing in pouches along the tops of the sofa cushions.

“Do they have Christmas in France?”

You have to ignore the fact that a house during most of mankind’s time on earth was a necessity, not a display case of prized personal possessions and decorating prowess. The spaces were crowded and multiuse. Beds were shared.

the presence of a visitor changes a day, no matter how close the friends are.

We preserve old buildings, why not old landscapes? But wilderness on that scale didn’t make a lot of sense. It was enclosed on all four sides by an iron fence and there were no benches. It was like a zoo enclosure without the animals and it made me feel lonely.

modular, portable living space called Living Unit by Andrea Zittel.

My family had always followed the “white makes a room look bigger” school of design, but I don’t know why that’s important. Sometimes you don’t want a room to feel bigger. Sometimes cozy is better.

I feel about historical houses much the way I do about biographies: guilty I don’t enjoy them more.

I told her avarice, envy, pride, lust, and wrath harm others, and gluttony is bad for your health. But sloth is just a willingness to move slower than others and that’s not a crime. I’ve always thought despair should be the seventh deadly sin instead.

Yew hedges can withstand even the most merciless cutting back and recover as though nothing had happened. Low branches can form new roots and grow into trees where they touch the ground.

You can’t garden without thinking about the future.

Does that make me an unreliable narrator? To a certain extent, aren’t we all?

emerald ash borer

I’ve always loved those books where friends gather for a weekend and lives are changed.