Vibes

  My teenage son and I had an interesting talk the other day about “vibes.” He’s always been perceptive, but in this conversation he described the depth of his perceptions with astonishing eloquence. Most of us know when something just doesn’t “feel” right, but less frequently we listen to those instincts, dissect them and react appropriately.

When I was negotiating the purchase of the house I now live in, I brought my kids over to walk through it. It was important to me to give them a picture in their heads about the place they were likely to call home. Of course, I warned them that the current owners still inhabited the place, but I had also unreasonably assumed that my children would be able to see beyond the huge furniture, dark walls, cloaked windows, and Hagrid-like interiors to the Harry-like home, and understand the space minus the people who were living here. My son (at age 11) couldn’t. In fact, he couldn’t get out of this house fast enough and ended up in tears with deep unsettle. Nothing felt right to him about this house, and when I realized the perception he was getting, I didn’t blame him one bit. He was right; everything about the place in its current state threw horrible vibes.

My mother ended up having a phone conversation with him that almost immediately calmed him down. She later told me what she said to Jims: “I told him to trust you. I told him to wait until you get your hands on the place, because when you get done, it will feel like home.”

My incentive to do just that was enormous, of course. It's an absolute essential that my kids feel good in my home! From this experience, my whole perspective on design changed. It went from how can I make this look nice to how can I make this feel right. Interiors must throw good vibes.  No fakers allowed.