we should wait, I’m not sure the house is ready, the various versions of self-restraint that I practiced and that she had observed me practicing for eight years and that she had decided, on this occasion, to circumvent.
The production company reached out. They had seen the submission and they wanted to feature the house in the Christmas special. I agreed. The crew came for three days and filmed everything, the exterior in the early morning light, the interior at different times of day, the greenhouse, the stone, the beams, the view, the details that Megan and I had argued into existence.
They interviewed me beside the fireplace.
They asked about Holt Ridge, about how I had built the company, about what the house represented in the arc of the work.
And then the interviewer asked: what do you want people to feel when they walk inside?
I answered without thinking about it first, which meant I answered from somewhere underneath the professional response, from the place where the nine-year-old still lived.
