dream home.

We’ve been thinking about our dream home lately. Angela wants wood floors and corner windows and hundred-year-old trees. She’d cope with a small kitchen if it was charming and historic enough, but under no circumstance is carpet to be tolerated.

I, on the other hand, have spent most of my imaginative energy thinking about the wardrobe. We would keep it in a rarely visited (and sometimes misty) room in the house. The wardrobe needs to be big—tall and wide enough for a person to stand right in it—and kind of majestically creepy, maybe a little ominous, and, most importantly, built right next to a wall. Its hinges will creak. A decorative lion’s head the size of an apple may or may not be carved into each of the two French doors.

We’ll have friends over for lunch. It will be a little cold inside and I’ll be busily stirring the spaghetti—too busy to stop and fetch myself one of the furry coats we keep in the wardrobe.

“Can I do anything to help?” our guests will ask.

“Why yes,” I’ll reply. “It’s a wee bit chilly. Greg, could you grab a coat or two from the wardrobe in the room down the hall. Get me the grey-ish one from the very back if it’s not too much trouble. Third door on the left.” He’ll head slowly off, a little perplexed at the unorthodoxy of the response to his generally insincere offer. He’d expected at most to have been handed a slimy-wet potato and a peeler.

A few minutes will pass and Greg’s wife Laura will ask where Greg went. Angela and I will shrug our shoulders in unison. The three of us decide as a group, now that the spaghetti situation seems to be fully under control, to set off in search of him. We’ll reach the wardrobe. The inch-wide crack of the open wardrobe door will be emphasized by the warm light squeezing through it. We’ll approach slowly and perceive the sound of Greg’s voice. He’ll be shouting.

“Greg,” Laura will say as she quickens her pace to the door and opens it. She will peer in, push aside furry coats and step a few feet forward, into and through the wardrobe, only to see Greg galloping about on a unicorn.

“Hey honey,” Greg will shout with wonder in his voice while his steed tromps about between the many lush trees that constitute a real-life thicket.

“What is this place?” Laura will ask, thoroughly mystified.

Angela and I will share a glance and silently convey to each other our deep satisfaction at insisting that our home be built with a wardrobe with no back, that leads directly out of doors to our tree garden where we keep our horse to whose forehead we’ve rubber-banded a birthday party hat—all so that we could watch every one of our guests have their minds blown and wonder, if only for a second, if they have found a whole other world inside of our wardrobe.