Frank Lloyd Wright’s name looms over me at the age of five, except I can not comprehend the text to speech yet so I just stare at the house. Referencing him as “The boy who built the famous house in Pennsylvania”. At the age of eight, I understood the name of the building was “Fallingwater”. “Fallingwater” and “Fountainhead” were always connected in my mind. Both enlarged posters, framed, looming, living parallel on either side of the front room’s windows. They were the only two objects occupying the space. The rest of the walls; barren. 

My mom would tell me she was glad I wasn’t born a boy. If I had been, my father would have named me “Rourke” and no one knew how to pronounce that. Instead I was born a girl and named after a character from her, Ayn Rand’s, book “We the Living.” I stole the book from the library when I was seventeen. I wanted to know where I originated from. Were we anything alike at all? I got bored halfway through and never finished the book. I still have it and everytime I get to the same part and can not continue. 

The “Fountainhead” never attracted me the same way “Fallingwater” did. The wording was harsh and if I looked at “Fallingwater” there were trees. I dreamed of living there one day for a long time. I still have never been. My father considered “Fallingwater” the standard for everything a home should be untouchable, uninhabitable art. No one lives in “Fallingwater”, it’s a museum. For that reason, He was never able to become fulfilled with our home. 

We were living.