The Dovecote

The Generic Tract House Gets a Name

I have always wanted a house that has a name. Visions of Anne and her college friends in the picket-fenced bower of Patty’s Place, curled up by the fire with an afghan and a cat, are the stuff dreams are made of after all. Especially with an Aunt Jim to do all the real work. Alas, while cottages are frequent in my current town, they also come with a price tag that is not an amount that is frequently available.

So, I have a very cute yellow tract house from the 1970s that is exactly the same as at least 3 other houses on my block, and probably more in the neighborhood. I have the kind of house, with aluminum-framed windows and popcorn ceilings, that nobody names. And I also have the scholarship of Bell Hooks:

“… - Queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent, and create, and find a place to speak, and to thrive, and to live.”

I have always wanted a house that has a name. And why can’t a generic tract house have one? Who says? Bell Hooks says I can invent what I want.

So now, our house is “The Dovecote.” I am making a sign and everything.

It’s named the Dovecote for many reasons. I frequently call A. “my love, my Dove.” B. has used a screen name with “Dove” in the title basically her whole adult life. There are a bevy of Mourning Doves that frequent the neighborhood and snack at the feeder I hang from our tree. And, near to my heart, Meg March had a house called The Dovecote. Yes, I DID go through a hardcore Little Women phase. So, if a dovecote is where the doves live, then that surely is this house.

I usually subscribe to the “vintage style, not vintage values” sentiment rife on cosplayers Instagram pages, but I do think some vintage values are okay. Namely, the one where you fall in love with your modest things and make them thoroughly your own.

And I gotta romanticise SOMETHING in this world where so much of the news is catastrophic, why shouldn’t it be my home?