Thoughts About Home by Deborah

Mid-summer Morning

The house we live in was built in 1891 on the same limestone that once supported the Southern Exposition. For those of you who may not know, the Southern Exposition (1883-1887) was a sort of mini-World's Fair that exhibited the latest in art, farm equipment and inventions. The building that housed this collection of wonders extended from Magnolia Avenue on the north to Hill Street on the South and from Fourth Street on the east to Sixth Street on the West.

 

When the building was disassembled in 1887, a man by the name of Slaughter bought the land and created what are now St. James, Belgravia and Fountain Courts. So, the limestone was recycled to sustain the houses of the courts and the roof slate was used to side a hospital and doctor's house built on Sixth Street in the 1890's and billed as the first hospital west of the Alleghenies dedicated exclusively to the treatment of women.

Today we call them Slate house and Junior Slate house. No longer a hospital and doctor's home, they now house an architect's office and condos.

 

Our house on Belgravia takes on a different slant of light depending on the season. It faces north so ours is the last side of the court to see snow and ice melt. Ours, too, is the last side to watch our Mountain Laurels spring into bloom or our Tulip Magnolia release her heavenly pink blossoms.

 

It is now mid-summer and cool enough to carry breakfast outside near the fountain in our small courtyard. What is it about the sound of running water that is such a comfort? I sip my hot coffee, listen to the mockingbird whose trill goes on and on from one song dipping into another, and relish the early morning. Last night I was awakened to the soft but persistent hoot of an owl in the magnolias.

 

I lay awake thinking about this house that I love, the timeless grace of it. The bed we sleep in was given to me by a childless couple in their nineties who were leaving their home of 47 years to move into assisted living. The bed had been a gift to the wife from a dear friend in Texas. It had been her friend's grandfather's bed. They gave me the bed with the promise that one day I would make of it a gift as well.

 

So, the night, the owl, the bed, the woman, all rest on the foundation stones of the building where Edison first displayed his 16 candle-powered light bulb. It is said in those days, families would gather before the Southern Exposition with dinner baskets and picnic on the grounds of what would later become Louisville's Olmsted designed Central Part. But long before Frederick Law Olmsted ever saw the land, these families sat transfixed waiting for dark when they would behold the dazzling display of Mr. Edison's single light bulb.

 

In the dark, I drift back to sleep waiting for morning in the arms of this old bed, held in the rooms of this old house, in mid-summer, lulled by the owl, to be awakened by the light with the bird whose song never seems to stop and whose variations are endless.

Best Friend

This will be our final spring in our house on Belgravia Court. 

In a few weeks, we will put our house on  the market and move on to another setting. At this time we have no idea where that will be but that’s okay. David and I are sure everything will fall into place when the time comes. In the meantime, we are looking at rentals as well as single family houses and condos. I’ve sent all our current documentation to a loan officer for pre approval and once we know for sure how we qualify , maybe we’ll write a contract or maybe we’ll check places on line in Hanoi or Savannah or someplace far away and rustic.

Since we’ve entered our sixties, everything has become relative.

Oh, wait a minute; this is supposed to be a real estate news letter. I almost forgot. Besides, any of you who know me very well know I would never move far away from my grandson.

 Let’s be honest. I am suddenly in the seller’s position. That means a lot of hard work, from the basement to the third floor! Staging a house for sale is not easy. The house must be clean, uncluttered and a little enchantment never hurts. I had a cousin who once told me she wanted to spend the night in our Jane Austen room on the third floor. That’s the fun part. Creating the magic in your home, letting the house speak to you in the way you have come to know it during the time the two of you have spent time together. My house is over a century old, so there’s already plenty of spirit in these bricks and mortar. I love these rooms and that helps bring out the best in each of us. Love always does that, you know?

All those projects you’ve put off come before you, front and center.  A check list is formed on the kitchen table and the two of you set about the arrangements. Junk day is March first: clean basement--check; closets are next--check; re-arrange pantries and kitchen cabinets-- check ; have kitchen floor refinished—check; have dining room patched painted—check; remove carpet from third floor and depending on condition of floors either clean or paint—check; install new medicine cabinet in third floor bath—check; sell or give away any unneeded furniture—check; wash windows – check; spread outdoor beds with pine straw and replace damaged post on deck; have flat portion of roof checked. Deal with it.

Sellers. My heart goes out to each and every one of you.

Now buyers. I understand. You have limits. We all do. Be reasonable. Do not shop outside of your range. There are bargains to be had but be reasonable. Be realistic.

Pray.

Call me.  I can help buyers AND sellers.  It’s hard. I know. I’m there. But it’s not all hard. It can be fun. Change doesn’t have to be all difficult. As a very wise five year old once told me. Change can be a kind of adventure. Even if it means leaving your best friend behind.

Deborah

Beyond This Place

What to tell you next? How David and I traveled south to Alabama through a slow and dense fog over the mountain from Sewanee on a cold, rainy afternoon through the back roads into the strange beauty of a denuded northern Alabama landscape with Victorian houses starkly rising like Confederate apparitions from the middle of bare fields, not a soul in sight, just the presence of these magnificent houses now quiet except for the imagined families that once graced their rooms so full and alive now gone, gone, nowhere to be seen the saintly grandmothers with the sweet smiles and thick waists in their aprons and wide heeled house shoes, the fathers in their suspenders holding a newspaper in one hand, looking out at us from the front porch as though we were the long anticipated guests for a late Sunday dinner. And, of course, somewhere in the background would be the middle-aged mother, a shawl draping her narrow shoulders and a hand gathered at her throat as if to protect herself from the chill of encroaching darkness.

 

We drove on through the rain until the fields turned to vast lakes and we zipped across long bridges to settle ourselves high on a hill in an old house with wide porches and a view of the water.  It rained steadily as we met our innkeeper and were ushered to our room with its tall ceilings and quiet chill.  The heat was turned up and we unpacked, placing our clothes and books in a way that warmed the room to us.  I have always loved creating a space for us wherever we’ve found ourselves, no matter how grand or modest the rooms, how near or far our home of the moment, stepping into a strange room and making it ours, if only for a night.

 

The next morning, I took breakfast with the innkeeper.  David had left the house hours before to meet with the men he’d come to see on business.  When I awoke and sat upright, I stared into the mirror over the dresser opposite the bed.  I had the disheveled look of a child suddenly aroused from a deep sleep and for a moment I stared blankly at this vision of myself as a child of certain age in her oversized silk pajamas, the top so large as to expose one shoulder, one bare shoulder as simple and spare as a child’s. Then I rose, slipped my bare feet into the dark flat shoes I wear with my night clothes, pulled on a long robe and made myself presentable before stepping into the wide center hall with the sound of rain, everywhere rain splintering the silence of this simple old house.

 

She was there, bustling in from the kitchen, pushing her hair away from her face with the back of one hand, while holding a cup and saucer in the other.  She smiled and asked if I’d like some coffee.  I said I would and she nodded toward the table set for two at the far end of the hall.  As dutifully as a child, I went to the table and took my place.

 

When she asked if she might join me for breakfast, I said I’d welcome her company and the two of us sat , for the better part of the morning, talking about the house, her five children, now grown and gone, her childhood in North Dakota and her love of old buildings.  It took a long time before she mentioned the dissolution of her marriage and the quiet discrimination she’d felt when branded by the local elite as a woman on her own.

 

Later, I would shower and dress, pack up our belongings and then strip the bed, folding the sheets carefully before placing them in the old wicker clothesbasket in one corner of our bathroom.  By the time David returned, it was early afternoon and we bade our farewells with hugs and promises of return.  Then, like some anonymous presence, some quiet and simple force, we retreated, into the rain, over the bridge, past the lakes, absorbed, absorbed into our lives beyond this place.

Beautiful Dreams

The house is tired. Abandoned by her mistress of 40 years she is now used by the family for reunions at Christmas and St. James Art Show. Otherwise the place braves the seasons alone except for tenants on her back floors. Her lovely beveled glass front doors have a threatening note taped to them saying if one so much as touches them an alarm will summon the police with such a noise as would raise the dead.

 

Tenants now enter through a side door into a small quaint room where someone’s grandmother had once wintered her ferns. From there they ascend a narrow back stairs with a satin rope as the railing. It is the kind of deep maroon satin rope churches use to mark pews for the family during funeral services.

 

The house is now for sale. Her public rooms are large. The foyer flanked by the front stairs was meant, I am sure, as some sort of gathering room. The living room to the left used to have pocket doors. They are gone which makes me angry until I spy the French doors leading to a stone terrace. I move quickly to remove the chairs blocking the doors, struggle with the locks and voilà, the doors open. However, the storm doors have been painted shut, locks and all, so I must satisfy myself with the light alone, a partial epiphany. I know the breeze in the trees, the smell of fall leaves, the sound of the nearby fountain all would flood this stale room with life and energy.

 

From the living room one enters the dining room where, I am told, the long table was left by an earlier owner all those years ago. In one corner of the room is a fireplace. Its mantle has an oval mirror with two small stands protruding to hold, I assume, candles. I am wrong. They are cake stands perched high connected to the mantle. I imagine cakes on the stands at Sunday dinner. A banana cream and a coconut cake. You could have your pick but you must finish your vegetables.

 

A staircase begins outside the dining room. The staircase is refined with alternating spindles of varied designs. As you climb the stairs a bank of stained glass windows face you. Each panel has a crank. They were meant to be opened as were the casement windows in the side sleeping porch at the end of the back hall on the second floor. My friend, Sena, lives next door and the porch from her study is eye to eye with this porch.

 

Later in the day she gleefully says I must buy this house. We could talk on summer nights between our porches as though we’d each climbed the huge old cotton wood between us. We’d pretend we were girls again and talk about our houses.

 

My fantasy continues as I walk down the hall toward the very front of the second floor, into the largest of the two bedrooms. As soon as I enter that room I feel the light. The house faces east so this room on this bright autumn morning is filled with the slanted light of early November. In the sitting area I notice on large window. It opens onto a small balcony which hovers over the front porch. The floor is made of stone with flag poles on either side.

 

I know then that each morning, weather permitting, I’d walk out my bedroom window and sit on my stone porch to watch the sun rise in the east or in the night wait for the stars and the mood to climb over the old trees, high enough for me to see and know it was time to retreat to bed and reading and sleep all the way until sunrise.

 

Then both Sena and I would live in magical houses with huge rooms and hidden passages. Sena says, “You’d breathe such life into that house. It needs you so.” And she is right. David would get those French windows open and together we’d bid the evening goodnight. Then we would walk back through, close the open windows and fall into the magic of this old house on the eve of our old age. And the young tenants could stay.

Photographs by Ad Cat Media. See more photographs at Autumn On the Court.

The Power to Overcome Loss

David and I moved into this wonderful old home on

Belgravia Court

at this time of year in 1994. I’ve resurrected a story I wrote about that time in honor of the anniversary. And in honor of another fine old home – Linden Hill.

 

I always thought that when I grew up, saying good-bye would get easier.  That somehow becoming an adult would imbue me the power to overcome loss.  For most, youth is the time of invincibility.  For me, it was just the opposite; I believed I’d become invincible with age.

Well, it hasn’t happened.  I’m still not very good at saying good-bye.  I’ve decided it’s an ongoing process.  I’ll spend the rest of my life saying good-bye, a moment at a time, to the places and people I’ve loved and left.  Because the truth is, love never leaves us.  We become what we love, assimilate what matters most to us--the people, places, foods, smells, touch, presence.

The time has come to say good-bye to Linden Hill.  On Monday, we close on our new house and begin our move from these wonderful rooms we’ve called home for the past year.  It’s been a place of comfort and healing.

I’ll never stop saying good-bye to these quiet spaces, the tall ceilings and large windows, the wide planks of pine and everywhere, the books.

I’ll never stop comparing fireplaces to the ones I’ve known here or awake in a lovelier room than the one I’ve known here.

This weekend Kate brought home some friends from school.  At two a. m. everyone became hungry and I cooked with them down in the kitchen.  Our kitchen doors were once windows and to open them you must push out and the large panes of glass give way to the out of doors.

It was stuffy inside and I opened the doors and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air.  I was astonished by the beauty of the night, the ripple of clouds just beneath the nearly full moon, the crickets and the stars.

It’s a little after 3 a.m. now.  The kids have all settled down.  The house is quiet.  The same night has gathered our new house where new windows await us.  It’s time now to say good-bye, to pack up my memories and move on.  It’s never easy to say good-bye.  Yet, life wouldn’t be nearly so rapturous if we never changed because we’d never grow. A layer at a time, I’m moving deeper and deeper into love.

Memory

I gather old flowers and pile them on a compost heap in the back corner of our courtyard. Theymake a colorful stack by the air conditioning compressor. The essence of summer, fading coxcombs, brittle straw daisies, delicate wildflowers from my mother’s garden. Rose of Sharon, tips of rosebuds and lanky lilies. Large white globes of hydrangea and the soulful beads of orange and black I can never recall by proper name. These flowers graced my home, carefully arranged in Tad’s stately ruby vases she always kept on her sideboard in the dining room, or Ama’s generous white sugar bowl, which must be at least 125 years old. My father’s mother handed me a delicate piece no bigger than a cream pitcher with roses suspended on the ivory finish.  My own mother gave me my favorite vase for rosebuds, a deeply hued rosette from Italy.

            My father-in-law was orphaned by the time he was five.  The personal effects of his missionary parents were not kept intact.  He had only his memory of the pieces he held sacred from the days when his parents were alive. As an adult, he traveled widely and one day I walked into his living room to discover two new vases perched at either end of the mantle.  My mother-in-law told me the vases were like the ones he remembered from his childhood, the ones which his mother had placed on either end of the mantle in their living room. These memory vases, as I have come to call them, are a deep burnt orange with fluted tops and a reed like finish. The interior is cool white porcelain. They are now in our living room. One day they will belong to another generation and I hope the story of their significance will be passed on as well.

I’ve never put flowers in these vases. Perhaps I will one day.  As I emptied the old flowers on the compost heap I thought of how wonderful it would be if they each went to seed and combined to form a whole new set of flowers in the tight little spot I have designated. It occurs to me that memory is like that.  Layer upon layer of distinct moments combine to form a continuum and the colors and textures unite to create something stronger and more whole that binds us to the past in a way that defies the purity of the single moment.

In this inferno we have known as August, it took flowers to keep me focused on surviving.

Mid-summer's Recollections of Home

All in a moment the evening sky went dark. Thunder terrified our dog, Missouri, and lightning glared over all of us. The rain took its time. Then, just as suddenly as the sky had gone dark, the rain flooded gutters, rushed through trees and pebbled the rooftops.

Sunday night in the city where the gaslights flicker even as we stuff certain window sills with towels to keep the water from seeping into the plaster walls below.

Upon waking this morning, the air is still and heavy. Today’s high is 96 degrees. It is, after all, summer.  It’s supposed to be hot and muggy. I take comfort in that.

In my childhood there was no air conditioning.  My mother rose before dawn to iron.  I wore shorts and halters. My favorite halter top had fluted straps that rose over my child’s shoulders and they made me feel pretty.

In those days we practiced our most difficult spelling words out loud as we took turns swinging on the neighborhood’s single swing set. D-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-c-e…..we were eight years old and we pumped our legs hard so we could swing high. E-l-o-q-u-e-n-c-e….

Our blind neighbor, Mrs. Pebbles, had a Seeing Eye dog who was allowed outside from time to time. He’d show up with a mouth filled with rocks which he would deposit at your feet with a look of keen expectation. You’d stop swinging long enough to scoop up one wet rock and throw it as far as you could, knowing he’d be back soon drooling the same rock.  We’d do this over and over, chanting spelling words and swinging in the hot days of summer.

Mrs. Pebbles had a music box that she would let me carefully lift the lid and watch the pop-up ballerina pirouette before a tiny mirror.  I opened and shut the lid over and over until I sensed it might be polite to say thank you and leave.

When we weren’t swimming or climbing on the swing set, we were running. We had imaginary wars, battles over what I can’t quite recall. Sometimes we played “Gunsmoke.” My best friend, Diane, always got to be “Miss Kitty” because Diane had a mole on her face and so did Miss Kitty. Diane called it her beauty mark and my mother assured me I was pretty enough without a mole on my face.

Up the way was a farmhouse where Virginia, Diane’s housekeeper, lived with her daughter Francis Arlene. Frances Arlene was a lot older than we were but we knew Virginia wanted more children. She told us about her “miscarriages.” She never mentioned a man which of course, at eight, made perfect sense to us.

Diane’s grandfather owned the farm and the house and the barns.  Out front of the house there were tall pear trees that sent down the sweetest fruit. You had to be careful of wasps, but the pears were worth it.

There was a large field near the barns and a horse named “Gypsy.” We had to get a step ladder out of the shed in order to mount her but once on her shiny black back, we would hold onto her mane as she walked around the circumference of the field. I would lay my face against her and if my head hurt as it sometimes did when I was a child, the pain would leave when I rode Gypsy. Up there high above the earth, I could feel the easy sway of her muscles beneath me as she ambled around that summer field.

Way off in the distance, beyond roads I was forbidden to cross, stood a tall brick house facing a road that no longer existed. If it had been up to me, Gypsy and I would have thundered right over those forbidden roads to that old house. I loved that old house. I would never have the chance to enter it before it was gone, but the love I felt was real and I have carried it into every old house I’ve entered since.

When it rained, we played in Diane’s playhouse which was stored in her daddy’s garage. He was never home. Diane lived with her grandparents next door.  Diane was allowed to see her mother once a year, but that’s another story.

It’s summer and if we slow way, way down, the living feels easy.

(Picture above is an abandoned home in Bourbon County, KY. Photograph by Deborah Stewart)

 

 

 

Flickering Candles

   

 And so we talk, deep into the evening on our small back deck, with candles flickering in their glass baskets. It is May, the month of our marriage and in a few days we will celebrate our 36 years together as man and wife, father and mother, Granddaddy and Amma.

 We share a bottle of chilled white wine. The evening is perfect, no air conditioner compressor, no mosquitoes, just the cool presence of early spring with the night birds calling to one another and the occasional siren in the distance to remind us of the city in which we now live.

     Together we have buried parents, witnessed births, faced difficult financial times, weathered illness, celebrated graduations and marriages. Sometimes, I confide, I wake in the middle of the night in a panic certain of the tasks that lay before me: waking Kate early so she can review for a test, reminding David to practice piano for his evening recital, fold the clothes still in the dryer, schedule dental appointments, shop for the week (Mom, there’s never anything to eat in this house…i.e. no chips, dips, soft drinks or sweets of all kinds etc). Then I open my eyes to the renewed awareness that Kate is now married, in her own home with her husband, Craig, and if she needs to get up early she sees to that.

 David is probably cradling his sleepy son who sometimes wakes in the night for a drink or to snuggle between David and his wife, Karen. At two, Dave the 4^th aka Baby D, states solemnly that it’s mommy’s bed, not daddy’s bed, proving once more that the Oedipal complex is alive and well among the two year olds of the world.

“If we were at the farm,” my husband says, “We’d be listening to the whippoorwills and the owls.”

“If we were in Paris," I say, "we'd be out walking until dawn, maybe stopping in at that tiny jazz bar just down the street from our room. Remember?"

“If we were in Monterey," he says, "we'd be walking the beach, listening to the rush of the sea and the snores of the seals."

“If we were there,” I say, “we’d have just finished dinner in that Greek restaurant which was, do you recall, smothered in fog that night. It was like walking in a dream.”

“If we were there,” he says, “I’d build you a fire in our bedroom fireplace and it would burn all through the night.”

“Yes,” I reply. “That was when I was afraid of the dark.”

“But,” he reminds me, taking a sip of his wine, “you’re not afraid anymore.”

“No.” I raise my glass to a toast. “You’ve been strong and kept me safe for a long time now. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“We’ve been strong together,” he says.

On our actual anniversary, we would celebrate with dinner at Lilly’s where the food and wine were exquisite. But, it’s that brief moment in the candlelit darkness of our back deck that held for me the true celebration of our marriage.

Cheers!

 

Finding a Way Back

  My father’s woods are laced with redbud and dogwood. The iris down near the first pond are in bloom and deep in the lane I know just where to look for the sweet William hovering like blue butterflies in the new shade. The peepers have made themselves known for weeks now in the pond out beyond the horse barn, the same pond where the cattails are coming back along the steep and muddy banks.

There are calves that shyly watch my approach as I walk into the midst of my brother’s herd. I sing old hymns to the cows and they seem to like it. None of them moves as I sing and walk through their congregation. At night I sit on the side porch and listen to their lowing in the dark.

I rarely sleep in when I’m out in the country. A cup of hot coffee never tastes better than in the cool mists of early morning out on my father’s farm. A blue bird has nested in the side of the farmhouse and my mother has decided to let her stay. Mother walks me to her flower beds and introduces me to her plants, Mama’s old fashioned pink, Mrs. Sheely’s daylily, the bleeding heart she thought she’d lost to last winter’s frigid January temperatures, the rose my father gave her the last summer of his life, the wood ferns she brought to the base of the sugar maple from the woods last year. It is a ritual with us. I’ve met the flowers in years past but this is the first year she has ever added, I want you to know where everything is so when I’m gone you can enjoy them.

I listen and remember. Then I tell her about a new tree I’ve noticed for the first time, down near the lake. It’s in bloom and I have no idea what it is. I describe the delicate blossoms and sweet fragrance. She nods and we walk on.

Last year David and I helped deliver a calf on a hillside (up near the old pear trees) in a swift cold wind. With phoned assistance from the vet, we eased this animal into life and then stood back and watched as the mother did the rest. After a while, the calf wobbled to its feet and stood next to its mother. The other cattle kept a polite distance but nothing escaped their notice. When the time was right, the herd closed in around them and everyone moved on out into the fields.

I’m not sure I want to be too specific about why going to my father’s farm is such a comfort to me. It’s a home like no other. I’m not ready to live there, but every time I leave, I always know I’ll find my way back.

Together

            I planted pansies this morning. Rain is due by noon so this morning I dug in the dirt, felt winter’s chill still in the spring soil, and then swept the courtyard clear of old leaves and magnolia pods. Our dog, Souri, accompanied my every move with a curious nose and then a loud bark of protest when she was shut in the courtyard and our white cat, Lydia, slipped through the rungs of the old iron gate to join me out under the tulip magnolia where I planted the pansies.

There is a brisk, warm breeze and the luxurious swish of cypress and magnolia. The wind chimes are alive and I pretend I am near the sea and the rush of wind overhead is the shore just beyond my walled courtyard. The UPS jet high overhead becomes a surging surf in my mind and all that’s missing is the smell of salt water on the breeze.

I have stretched the wood pile’s tarp over the porch railing to dry in time to store before the rain comes. It blows free, catching against the trunk of our holly tree which stands three stories tall and has a straight, flat trunk that shimmers when the rain comes and courses the trunk like tears. In my fantasy, the tarp flapping against the holly’s trunk becomes the main sail slapping against the sail boat’s stanchion which stands nearly as tall in memory as the holly does in the present.

GeorgiaFort Lauderdale Before we had children, David and I used to sail. We’d pack a sail bag with old jeans, bathing suits, deck shoes and sun-block and drive all night from our home in Georgia to Ft. Lauderdale where we’d catch a small plane out the Abacos and one of Judy’s charter boats. We’d live on our borrowed sail boat for days, cooking in the narrow galley, sleeping in the forward berth and showering in the tiny head, careful all the while to conserve our precious water.

Those were wonderful days to learn about one another. One night I woke with a start to the sudden rush of a spherical hum which wrapped our entire world deep in the night. I was afraid and it was David who reassured me there was nothing to fear. It was only the wind in the rigging creating the high pitched whine. Only wind in the rigging.

Now, on this spring morning in land-locked Kentucky, all these years later, the wind in the trees takes me back to such sweet memories of our home on the sea where we first understood what it was to be alone together in the midst of this wide wonderful world.