Creating a haven

I know what I think of when I hear the word “haven,” but I was curious as to how the dictionary described it. The words safety, refuge, shelter and peaceful were all examples. But I think the word can have a deeper meaning. To me, a haven is the perfect place in which to be.
During the summer of 1994 my sister Janet and I rented a regrettably dank, dark, funky little cottage in White Lake. We had mistakenly searched the New York Times for rentals and were “taken” to say the least. Everything inside the musty cottage was either broken, cracked or falling apart.

We had paid a lot of money for the place, and tried to make the most of it, but it was nearly uninhabitable. There was one big, lumpy bed in the tiny bedroom and if we let go of the sides of the mattress we slumped into the middle together. The outdoor charcoal grill was missing a leg and nearly fell over every time I attempted to use it. We brought our own dishes, as most in the house were not even in a condition to be sold at a yard sale, and our towels were still damp when we returned to the house each weekend. A haven this was not.

Two years later, we learned of a house in Callicoon, NY that was for rent. The house had been built in the 1970s and the owners clearly had little money, as everything was done as cheaply as possible. The hideous, mud-brown kitchen cabinets were made of some kind of compressed cardboard covered with faux-wood; the fridge was small; the electric stove old (and I hate electric stoves); and the toilet and tub in the bathroom were a strange shade of green. There was no furniture in the house save for a 1950s-era speckled green Formica table that we found in the basement and installed in the dining room. The defunct dishwasher in the kitchen was used for pots, pans and dry goods.

A haven this was not. Not at first. Little by little, we furnished the house with castoffs from friends and family and with piecemeal finds at yard sales, auctions and the occasional reasonably priced piece from an antique store. As the years passed, we rented the place for a longer period of time than just the summer until we were year-round renters. We adorned the walls with artwork and lined bookcases with favorite tomes, CDs and my collection of over 200 cookbooks. We planted flowers on the property and I grew herbs in container pots on the front porch. I spent the work week in the city pining for and eagerly awaiting the weekend.

Because the house was set back from the road and had a corn field on one side and woods on the other, we relished the quiet and privacy, and were feeling more and more that we had found our haven.

A decade went by, and then one day our landlords called and asked to come by the house. It didn’t bode well to me. After we were all seated, we were informed that they were moving to the south, where the husband had family.

“We know how much you love it here and how well you’ve taken care of it. You’ve made it your own. So we don’t want to put it on the market if you’d like to buy the house,” they said.
My mature reaction was to burst into tears. “Can’t you just rent the house to us forever?” I asked, knowing full well we couldn’t afford to purchase it. Later that day when we told our dad about their offer, he responded, “Why should you wait until I’m gone, when I can give you the money for the down payment now?” Which he did, and we bought ourselves a house. Or I should say, a home.

Since then we have renovated the kitchen, including all the shelving and cabinets, and bought a new refrigerator and stove. We had the bathroom ripped apart to give us a totally new, stunning makeover. We bought new, firm beds for the bedrooms; we bought mid-century shelves for the dining room. Eventually we had gleaming wood floors put down in the living room and replaced the couch and chairs there. More art now adorns the walls, much of it from our travels to Mexico. And I started a proper garden for vegetables and herbs, and it is safe from any intruders, save for the occasional pesky chipmunk.

The kitchen from the beginning was my personal haven. Before the house came into our lives, I had lived (for 40 years) in a tiny studio apartment in Greenwich Village in downtown Manhattan. That room was my kitchen, living room, dining room and bedroom. There was one small closet and a miniscule bathroom. Entering the house in Callicoon that first day in 1996, I fell in love with that shoddy (but more than amply sized) kitchen, and all these years later my appreciation has only grown.

So, now I have a haven within a haven. Who could ask for anything more?

One of the first meals I remember preparing for us in my kitchen was jumbo pasta shells stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella and spinach in marinara sauce. It’s always remained a favorite dish of ours. I would like to pass the recipe on to you, and hope you share it with someone in your own special haven.