All this talk about houses and moving at a time of so much change has been a bit unsettling.
Years ago I wrote a song, now probably lost to old tapes long tossed, about leaving a house.
This old house, it’s seen its share of rain
Standing strong, when we broke from the strain…
Thinking back on what these old boards have seen, you know they’ve seen it all
The voices and reflections, growing pains and pleasures
Of a love that we never thought would fall
But tonight I’ll lock this door for the last time
Leaving everything behind inside these walls
Kept safe forever deep inside these walls
Some years ago I received a letter in a small green envelope. Written on the outside was, “My parents were married in your house forty-two years ago,” and inside was a copy of a New York Times article about the couple1, one in a series of articles on long-term relationships that have lasted, and a note from their daughter asking if they might come and recreate their wedding photo, taken in what is now my office.
This is not the first time something like this has occurred. A few years before, I’d opened the door one Sunday afternoon to a woman clutching the arm of her mortified, tween-aged son, asking if they could see the place. They’d lived here during their “happy years,” according to mom, and she wanted to see it one more time before they moved away. We toured the place, me stashing laundry and clutter under pillows, the kid squirming in awkward ambivalence as his mother touched the walls, opened the closets, sat on beds, and recounted her decorations and renovations, most of which— the pickled oak and floral-tiled kitchen, the pink wall-to-wall carpeting throughout the house— I’d long since eliminated. Her social and decorating sense shared a similar lack of consideration.
She cried and pet the dogs, and told stories of the gatherings that had taken place before hard times and a younger woman had changed the direction of her life.
“I thought I’d always be here,” she said.
A few years before that, another envelope had arrived in the mail, this one large and manila, containing copies of photos and a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary announcement from 1922. The envelope was from that couple’s granddaughter. They’d died, and she thought to send a copy of the story and accompanying photos to the unknown (to her) present owner of the house.
Me.
There was my dining room before someone painted the wood white, a chandelier hanging in the middle of it. There, sitting on the hallway stairs, are the revelers. I think the man on the left is wearing a crown. The grumpy-looking man on the right is being fussed on by a woman, and there, in the middle, according to the caption, is Kay, arms raised by her scrunched-up face, gangly legs in bright white tights.
The Somerville Journal described the anniversary party including the children – I wonder if Kay is “Katherine C Donovan, a student at Notre Dame Academy, dressed in orchid taffeta,” which could explain the face. Orchid taffeta isn’t for everyone.
The article goes on to say, “The house was handsomely decorated with a variety of cut flowers, smilax, and potted plants. An orchestra furnished music. Mr. and Mrs. Donovan were liberally remembered with gifts of silver, cut glass, and bric-a-brac.
Perhaps the most highly-prized gift was brought from Washington by a friend a few days after the celebration. This was a fine large photograph of President Harding on which is subscribed in the President’s own handwriting: – ‘To John G. Donovan, with felicitations becoming to the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. With all cordial good wishes. – Warren G. Harding.‘”
Maybe Kay was wincing at the concept of a man with a crown (one assumes) being congratulated on single-handedly achieving twenty-five years of marriage.
And then the latest visitors arrived: the anniversary couple and their daughter. Mom came in teary-eyed, dad unable to focus on anything but the house. Theirs had been a trip from the seventies, living here in a collective, run and owned by the poet Ron Schrieber.
They walked through, touching the walls, going into every room, commenting on how things had changed and who had been in and out of the scene, who’d lived in what room. Marge Piercy and Tillie Olsen, two of our founding American feminists and authors, had been here; Nico, Ron’s partner, had worn a white dress at the couple’s wedding and then changed into red later on. This was a straight, traditionally-raised couple of twenty-somethings who found themselves in the heyday of the Gay 70s, in a house filled with creativity, communal living, and all the lines blurred.
The dining room had been a dance hall, with dancing every night to music playing from the stereo stored in the leaded glass built-ins.
The kitchen had been painted yellow and orange, with peg board walls and collective cooking, while a men’s group gathered in the living room.
The couple would let the dog – the perfect dog – out onto the porch roof when they were too stoned or too lazy to walk him. Life was adventurous and daring and carefree, and they’d be gone before Tillie would write about how “having it all” meant choosing between writing and mothering, because you couldn’t do both without money and help. They’d be gone before Ron lost his soulmate John to AIDS, living the rest of his life afterwards mourning him, working as a university professor in Boston.
I had set the dining room table with champagne, yellow tea roses, cheese, crackers, chocolates, and strawberries. Still magical in their memories, the couple pored through their meager picture album from the event as they sipped their champagne: grandma here, “some guy named Frank '' there, pointing into the air toward the corners of the rooms where people still stood in their minds’ eyes.
I, too, have filled this house with many lives and sounds, meals and dogs, music and travelers from near and far. I raised my sons here, changed diapers, read stories, agonized over sickness and heartache, cheered wins, and blew out candles. I’ve celebrated and I’ve grieved here. My friends have gathered here, and this is the family landing place for holidays and memorials. I’ve hosted forty-three international travelers as tenants in the rooms upstairs, many more in the apartment below, as well as sundry musicians, artists, and other friends. They’ve all sat at my table, cooked in my kitchen, laughed and had wine or tea on the porch or by the fire. Many times I’ve heard lonely or homesick travelers sitting on the stairs outside my office finding comfort in my dogs’ kind eyes, their faces leaning against soft, furry necks as they unburden themselves in Japanese or Spanish, Hindi or Turkish.
I don’t know when or if I’ll be ready to leave this old house for good. I know I’m only one of a line of caretakers, and there will be others. But tonight I sit here cradled in all the moments left behind, some more than a hundred years old, knowing, like me, they’re all held safe within these walls.
Morning Teaistisms
All this house history caused me to pull out the bone china teacup from my ex-husband’s grandmother’s house. Violet’s attic is where I found the box marked “pieces of string too small to use,” and there were a few other treasures in her house I liked and kept, this cup among them.
Farland Provisions in Provincetown has been keeping me alive this winter. They’re closing for two weeks, so I thought it important to buy too many cookies from them before they did. Tea and cookies for dinner it was, then.
The perfect meal.
My relationship being built on “an absence of fuss” is not something I’d want advertised, but then I’m certainly never going to be featured in that column, so what do I know?
I loved this piece, Marjie. It's beautiful. No one has come to any of the homes I've lived in to see it and bring back memories sad, happy, and everything in between. It's an honor and a gift to invite people who've been associated with the house in the past.
On a road trip with my mother before she passed away nine months later, we went to her parents' home in Pasadena for one last look. We pulled up in front, got out, walked up the steps to the porch, and I knocked on the door. I was praying they'd open it to give my mother the gift of seeing the house again. I have so many memories of spending summers there as a child. They didn't open the door. They didn't respond to the note I left asking them to call me. I made up my mind then and there to always say "yes" to a request of seeing or showing the house. A "yes" fills body, heart, and soul for all.
That's a LOT of legacy. Does it feel heavy?