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Sunsets in Arlington

Sunsets in Arlington

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Yesterday I saw the house where Suzanne and Appolinaire will live. It sits on a ridge in Arlington where, on a wintry day when the house across the street has been torn down and the new, big one not yet built in its place, you can almost see the Capitol dome and the red light atop the Washington Monument.

It’s an amazing situation, made possible by the generosity and hard work of two dear friends (who live next door). And the more of the place Suzanne and Appolinaire saw yesterday, the wider their eyes became.

This is not your typical one-bedroom apartment in the boonies or crowded share in Columbia Heights. This is kismet — perhaps what you get after living for years without electricity or running water.

Whatever the reason, come January, the happy couple will move in and inherit not only an enviable, close-in location but also an untrammeled view of the western sky.  A bank of kitchen windows will see to it that they end each day with views like this. And if I know them as well as I think they do, they will end each day feeling as blessed as they do now.

Dark House

Dark House

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Woke up this morning to a dark house. It was an early rising, and I’m used to coming downstairs to  dim light and shadows, thanks to a fluorescent light over the kitchen sink that has become so much a fixture that I don’t notice it anymore — unless it’s out, as it was today.

Gone were the shadowy shapes of the worn couch and wing chairs. Gone the hutch and table. Gone the carpet and trim. Instead, the blue dial of the clock radio face asserted itself, and the microwave timer threw its glowing dots into the void.

It was a different downstairs that greeted me this morning, a blank and mysterious one. One that made me realize that what I usually think of as darkness isn’t that at all. It’s only a dusky substitute.  

Four Walls

Four Walls

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It was a weekend to clean and organize. Dust was flying — so much so that I thought for a while I must be catching a cold. No, I was catching a house. A house that had been languishing for lack of attention lately, but a house looking much better after a few days of vacuuming and polishing.

I’ve been in the house a lot less lately and so have been appreciating it more. I love the way afternoon sun slants in the kitchen this time of year. It reminds me of the old days when the kids were young and playing underfoot there. One of them in the play kitchen that was tucked under the counter, another in the playpen parked in the living room in front of the hutch and the other stirring suds in the sink.

Oh, I was harried, I’m sure. I had a magazine deadline of some sort — I always did.  My mind was probably filled with the interviews I had to do and the errands I needed to run for the girls — new shoes or hair cuts.

But I have those days inside of me now, and the girls do, too. And soon  — God willing, a week from today! — we will all be reunited in that kitchen, as Suzanne returns after three and a half years in Africa. Returns not alone but with a Beninese fiance, Appolinaire Abo, soon to be our son- and brother-in-law!

So much has happened within these four walls, so much more will.

Old House

Old House

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This house was built in 1740. It belongs to my friends Annie and Pete, who laugh when they lead a tour. “It takes about 30 seconds,” they said.

The house is small and beautiful, with original beams, slanting floors, and a spirit that comes from standing long upon this earth. It is the small of age and utility, the small of cozy evenings and dark afternoons. You duck your head to go from the front room into the back, to hike up the steep stairs to a loft that was once reached only by ladder.

Being in this place gave me a taste of what it must have been like to live in the 18th century, the quiet thoughts, the belief in soil and rainwater, the everyday glimpse of mountain and field. Poor in so many ways, to be sure — but rich in so many others.

A Fuller House, Again

A Fuller House, Again

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The house is asleep in a way it can only be when there are young people inside. The kind of oblivion they can muster spreads through the walls and settles on an older inhabitant, makes me feel drowsy too, like I could easily crawl back under the covers and sleep for a few more hours.

I marvel at the way a house can change its moods and mettle. Is this serene room the same one that housed a playpen in the corner? Or an impromptu dance concert on the floor?

I grew up in several houses; my kids have only had this one. To them it will always be home. But to me it is many homes.

It’s the place we moved with a six-month-old baby, certain we’d made a mistake, that it was far too much house. But it’s also the place that seemed impossibly crammed eight years ago, stuffed full of kids and books and clothes and shoes.

The clothes and shoes, they will always be with us, but the children, they are gone. Even the one who’s asleep upstairs is gone, though she’s here for the summer. I know how the empty nest can fill again and I won’t be surprised if this one does. What I marvel at is the constancy of the dwelling as life swirls in and around it. Sometimes I just sit here and try to take it all in.

Big House

Big House

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Suburban roads and American cars aren’t the only things looking big to me these days. There’s the house. With Celia back in college the place has grown overnight.

As the youngest and last child in residence — and in love with clothes and shoes — she had spilled out of her bedroom and turned her sister’s room into a big walk-in closet. So two rooms are emptied, not just one.

And then there was her habit of falling asleep in the office — enough so that I would automatically tiptoe when I came downstairs early in the morning.

In other words, she was here, even when she wasn’t (which was often). But now she is most assuredly not here. No music pulsing out of the bathroom as she gets ready for work. No Chanel perfume trailing in her wake.

She’s fine, she’s happy, she’s where she should be.

The house is too big. That’s all.

Piano at Rest

Piano at Rest

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After half a century on its feet the piano needs a rest. And it’s getting one.

It all started when the instrument kept losing its tune. The tuner diagnosed loose pins and proposed a remedy. Turn the piano on its back, insert a wood-expander solution around the pins and wait a week.

Luckily there’s a largish space in the front half of the living room so the piano could rest there — well barricaded, of course, so Copper doesn’t interfere. Meanwhile, the room is topsy-turvy, and there’s a big wall space where the piano used to be.

Still, I think the vacation is well deserved. I imagine the piano on a beach, a gentle breeze tickling its ivories, its noble shoulders sunk into the sand. Soon it will sit up, shake itself awake and be ready to play again.

Washing and Drying

Washing and Drying

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The dishwasher is fixed so now I can look back wistfully to the weeks of washing and drying. OK, not too wistfully. It was getting old. But the glasses did feel squeaky clean when I rinsed them and  the plates stacked up nicely after they were dried.

There was the pride of completion that I don’t feel when the dishwasher does all the work. And I never ran out of knives or spoons. Dishes were washed after they were used. No two-day limbo while the food left on them grew ever more caked and dried.

So yes, washing dishes by hand had its charms. But I’m glad the old machine has been pressed back into service.

From Place to Words and Back Again

From Place to Words and Back Again

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I learned from the “Writer’s Almanac” that today is the birthday of Sarah Orne Jewett, born 1849 in South Berwick, Maine. A descendent of doctors and sea captains, Jewett wrote poetry and historical fiction but is best known for her short stories.

She is a rare writer for me, one I came to know through her home rather than her work. I had yet to read Jewett’s stories when I wrote an article on historic homes of New England that took me to her house in South Berwick.

I’ve never forgotten the upstairs writing room, what it was like to look out those thick glass windows, imagining the world Jewett knew, the New England shipbuilding culture that was vanishing as quickly as she could describe it.

It’s a funny thing, meeting a writer first in her house. It’s not unlike the acquaintances you form when traveling on a train or airplane, seat-mate confidences. There’s a quick and easy intimacy that flows from the place that then lingers when you read the words.

After that trip, I read what many consider Jewett’s masterpiece, the story collection Country of the Pointed Firs. And there it was again, the place I had seen, the lowered light of that northern clime, the herbs, the dark firs. From place to words and back to place again.


(Photos: The house now and then, courtesy Historic New England)

Open House

Open House

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Common sense tells me to turn on the air conditioning. It will be in the low nineties today, high humidity. But another impulse keeps it off, a desire to be one with the summer, to feel the heat, to be cooled by fans and not refrigerated air.

And I think the house likes it, too. The wood swells, the plants thrive. Paper softens and curls. Deck doors are thrown open so the outside comes in.

A breeze flows through from back to front. A chorus of cicada song rises and falls, and because the windows are open I can hear it.

Summer is best in an open house.