Published in The Daily Hampshire Gazette, 2/14/2019
When Nerissa Nields first walked into a yellow Victorian house for sale in Northampton in 2003, she instantly knew — both that she loved it and could not afford it. At the time, she was, in her words, “devastated” by a recent, sudden divorce from her husband and bandmate after ten years of marriage. They were about to put their tiny Hatfield farmhouse up for sale, so Nields was house-hunting. She wanted to live closer to the action and community of Northampton, maybe near Childs Park. Though the four-bedroom house was out of her budget, she’d flagged it to her realtor.
Located across from Childs Park and kitty-corner to Cooley-Dickinson Hospital, the house had a wrap-around porch and two gardens out back that were bursting with flowers — including hydrangea, lilies, phlox, and blueberry bushes — tended by the last owner, an avid gardener. “It’s paradise back here,” Nields remembered thinking. When she entered the front room and stood between it and the parlor, “I had a vision,” she said. “I imagined writers sitting in a round.” In addition to playing and touring with her sister in their folk-rock band, The Nields, since its inception in 1991, she had just signed a contract with Scholastic to write young adult novels and had started teaching songwriting. She felt ready to teach.
Standing between the two rooms, her body tingled. “I’m a believer in magical houses,” she said. “I really think that you can walk into a space and know pretty quickly if it’s got good feng shui, good vibes, good spirits.” As she took in the crown molding, high ceilings, and wood floors of the 1874 house she felt that and more. “I just felt, This is home,” she said. It was her dream home.
Some things were less than dreamy — the peeling linoleum in the small kitchen, some bad wallpaper and sirens from ambulances racing across the street — but the good feeling was strong, so Nields did some fast “if” math. If she could sell the farmhouse for $10,000 more than planned, if the owner of the Victorian could go down another $10,000, if she could run two full writing groups year-round, and rent out the top floor for a while, then… maybe?
She promptly called her parents to ask for a bridge loan, put her house on the market for higher than planned and the next day signed a purchase and sale agreement on the Victorian. Within weeks the Hatfield house sold in a bidding war. On August 30th 2003, she moved into her dream home. Two weeks later she was running two full writing groups from her living room, calling them, “Writing It Up in the Garden,” a riff on a Nields song title, “Living It Up in the Garden.”
She was elated — and many friends did not understand. “People said to me, ‘You’re 36 years old and you just bought a giant house.’ And I said, ‘I think I’m going to find a partner and have kids.’” Three months later, she did indeed meet her dream man, Tom Duffy, a psychotherapist, who moved into the house in 2004. They married in 2005 and then had two kids, Lila, now 12, and Johnny, now 10.
Fast-forward to 2017. With two active kids, a dog named Hudson, plus a full schedule of writing and songwriting groups, a youth chorus group, a book group, and extended writing retreats — the house, which her writers dubbed “Big Yellow” years ago — was beginning to strain. “All of this was really wonderful,” she said. “But as my kids got older, it became harder to have my workspace be in their space.” They had limited access to the main living rooms during groups and retreats. “This is the dilemma of the working mother,” she added, “but I was constantly taking away from my family for my business and I was constantly taking away from my business and my creative work for my family. And fantasizing all the time about making another space.”
Nields had long harbored a vision of transforming the antique barn garage in her backyard into a place to host her groups. Research revealed that she could not build on the existing foundation; it was too close to a neighbor for today’s zoning codes. This was a bit of a blow — she loved the old barn and all its signs of having once housed actual cows. And it had to be small — she was only allowed to make a single occupancy space, no more than one bedroom and 900 square feet. Also not ideal, but workable. “Finally I had the funding,” she said, “and my husband was like, ‘I will do anything to get your vision to come true for my own selfish reasons — I want the house and our kids want the house.’”
They hired John Sackrey of Sackrey Construction, who had been their contractor for their 2011 kitchen addition. A local architect, Emily Estes of Emily Estes Architecture and Design, was also called in and plans were made. “I’ve been in a band since I was 23 and I am a collaborative artist,” Nields said. “That’s what lights me up. So it was wonderful to work with John and Emily.” They had weekly meetings around her dining room table, hatching plans for the house. They broke ground in November 2017. Nields documented many stages of the build on her blog with a kind of bittersweet joy — from the clearing of the old barn and the necessary but painful removal of four pine trees to the walls going up to the roof going on. She lamented the pines, but noted on her blog, “Now that the trees are down, the beautiful red maple feels like queen of the yard. Every time I look out my kitchen window, I see her giant Y, a big Yes.”
She needed that yes sometimes. As anyone who has renovated anything knows, building takes a ton of time and energy, with many decisions to be made, from “micro-choices” like cabinet edge style to more interesting but no less confounding things like the animal for the weather vane. They went with an owl — “It’s a predator,” she wrote. “We writers need to catch the muse, perhaps.” Though she reached out to her community over tile choices for the kitchen, one decision was easy, “Whenever there was a question of more or fewer windows, my answer was always, ‘more,’ ” she said. “I wanted light to be pouring in.” One of those windows was one of the few salvageable things from the crumbling barn — a four-paned window, green peeling paint left intact.
During the build, Nields, Estes and Sackrey agreed on almost everything, minus a few details. One of those was the exterior color — Estes wanted black, Nields, blue. They compromised on a deep, deep navy. Thus, “Little Blue” joined her “Big Yellow” sister as a clean-lined, farmhouse-inspired cottage with one-bedroom, an open-concept main room, vaulted, pine-clad ceilings and a screened porch. The floors are wide-plank white oak. Douglas Fir beams are exposed and there’s a stacked stone hearth for the wood stove.
When it was time to move in — September 2018 — her writers had mixed feelings; they loved Big Yellow. When Nields offered to bring in the old couches instead of buying new ones, the writers were happy. But would that ineffable, creative thing, maybe the muse chased by the owl, follow them there, too? “There was so much magic in that front room from all the years of writers writing,” Nields said. “I remember at the very first retreat being a little worried — is this space going to have the magic?” But it did. Maybe, she said, even more. “Being away from the road, all the light, being in a circle. The fire is really nice,” she said. “The groups seem more unified. The feeling of community seems even stronger,” she said.
Nields has always seen some aspect of the property as a shared, public space. Her dreams for this second structure reflect that. She wants this to be that “third place” for her people outside of home and work. “That’s more than the café, that’s a place where they can commune and share and feel loved and heard and trusted,” she said.
“I would love for this to feel like a spiritual place for people to come and gather and talk about their own deepest hopes and dreams and prayers and wishes for the world,” she said. “I do think we’re in such a precarious time in history with what’s going on with our government in this country right now, and our greatest hope is to come together in houses, in safe spaces and speak our truths.”
Valerie Reiss has written for The New York Times, The Week, Newsweek, Yoga Journal, Women’s Health, and more. She also offers interior design consultations. Visit valeriereiss.com for more.
