The House of the Three Peniiiii

I am a girl--a woman -- and though I am a tomboy at heart, I am also a princess, a queen. I love earrings and necklaces and bubble baths and goddess tarot cards and coffee cups with gold trim and big bouquets of flowers. I love cats and perfume and pink. But in a house of boys slowly everything turns male. The colors are earth tones, the food less spicy, the decor more male bachelor than bohemian chick. I fight it in small ways--but it is a losing battle. Jonathan--a remarkably open man -- sniffs when I get sheer curtains of underwater scenes in aqua for Theo's room, or European school shoes in red for Benji.
"Aren't these a little girlie?" he asks.
When I painted my former study (now Benji's bedroom) cloud blue instead of princess pink I mourned.
But yesterday I reclaimed a little feminine boho beauty. I splurged and bought a colorful, patterned duvet from anthropologie. It is made of exotic Indian fabric--paisleys and flowers and deep reds and aqua/turquoise greens. I checked it out before I got it-- I choose my husband over fabric--and he said, sure my love, get it.
So yesterday I did. The purchase was not without ominous signs. While we were waiting for the saleswoman to fish it out of the upstairs store-room Theo knocked over a tower of precariously stocked ceramic candles-which all came crashing to the floor. Ay caramba!
But I got my duvet. I brought it home and put it on the bed. O beauty! i just adore it! I want to roll around on it all day, curled up with classic literature and listening to sitar music.
When Jonathan saw it he said, "It is pretty girlie. I don't think many men would sleep under this."
"Men in India would, my Raj," I said.
But he curled up beneath it and we had the most glorious night of sleep. And when I woke up and saw flowers and paisleys and patterns I felt so happy. I can have a little corner of femininity in my home of the three peniiiiii.