The Stillness of Home
Hello!
This is not my usual blog post, in fact, it is not like any I have written before. It is a creative writing exercise, a little writing fun on a wintery day. Take a step back in time into our old house and the magic that stirs within.
I hope you enjoy it!
🌿🌿🌿
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?
Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends?
Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer
to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night,
or the expectant pause of a room full of people
when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all,
the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house?
Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
-Norton Juster
I feel a warm, quiet connection in the stillness of our home this morning. The only sound, the gentle tapping of my keyboard on the wooden kitchen table. An Amaryllis stretches out to a soft white winter light. I wonder about the color of the flower, apricot or pink? It is somewhere in between, reminding me of the hues of the hibiscus flowers my husband planted in our Vietnam Garden years ago. Shards of light rest upon a petal and the memory of that Vietnamese home, Chateau Mango, warms me as I reach for my coffee mug. I pause to consider the words flowing from my fingertips when I hear a familiar sound, like an old friend calling out as they enter the house. I stop typing, wondering if it will call for me again.
I only hear the sound in solitude, when it is just me and this old house. It starts with the soft creak of a floorboard and a lightness in the air, the kind you feel after a deep exhale when your body melts into your breath. It moves me, this secret that only me and the house share. I breathe in the life of it, the landscape of memory, the year of my becoming one with our old house.
It has been ten years since I first stepped from the car, looking anew, towards a country home, nestled in the woods of New Hampshire. Days earlier I had left our home in Vietnam, the pulse of Ho Chi Minh City still surging through my body, like an electric charge that never disengaged. I knew that day, when I looked at the old house, as sure as you know the name of your child, after 30 years living overseas, it would someday welcome us back to New England. Back then it was an undetermined point in time, but no matter what, the house would wait, a home we would fill with family, friends, and memories, a home to reflect the years of our traveling life. A home to slip into the beauty and stillness of nature.
The sound comes again, like a hushed whisper, the way a child might bring its tender lips to your ear to tell you a secret. I glance up and look beyond the kitchen table and think how much I love this interior view. The kitchen adjoins a small annex, a little library we call our “book nook.” We added it when we renovated the house in 2015, bridging the new house with the old house (c. 1790), a connection between past and present.
In the book nook, two built-in bookcases frame a picture window with a view to a meadow gently dipping into a pine woodland. A window seat extends the full length of the view, throw pillows from our Vietnam travels scattered across, it welcomes us to stretch into the pages of a good book. It is our reading sanctuary. Books are themed by the countries we lived in; Australia, New Zealand, China, Vietnam, the USA, and England. Out of reach on the top shelf, a collection of blue and white pottery from our time living in China sits next to a painting by my mother, a scene of the New England town I grew up in along the sea. She painted it in the 1970s when she first started to become the painter of her dreams. I linger a little longer in the memory and hear the ethereal sound again.
The Keeping Room
The sound drifts from the Keeping Room, the way smoke flows upward after a candle is snuffed out. It swirls around me, embracing me in it’s enchantment. I look toward the Keeping Room and notice the contrast between the creamy white book nook to the dark wood-paneled room beyond it. When I walk from one space to the other, I am transported through time, as if in an hourglass, sand trickling back 200 years. The room was common in American Colonial homes in the late 18th century. Old, wide, planked Eastern pine wood floors and paneling absorb the light from the east and south-facing windows. The wood is the color of high-grade maple syrup, deep, rich, and warm. The original nails, square heads, are topped with tiny wood plugs so as not to obscure the beautiful knotted pine patterns. A comfortable size room, large enough to seat twelve around our wooden farmhouse table, has a large open brick hearth, a welcoming feature of the room. One corner sits a little lower than the other, earth and stone beneath the building have been in flux for over 200 years.
In 1790, the Keeping Room was also known as the “Hearth Room,” serving as a communal gathering space. It was the central part of family life in many New Hampshire homes. The room was used for cooking, eating, socializing, sewing, and oftentimes, sleeping. Women manufactured all cloth by hand in 1790. Fleeces of wool were torn, picked, greased, and prepared for wool cards, with many more steps to follow before creating a garment. The children helped with knitting and sewing and tasks around the farm. Small animals might have been moved close to the hearth in colder months during bitter winter nights.
Looking towards the room, I often try to imagine the scene in 1790. I often wonder how many baby lambs were tucked around the radiant light of an open fire for warmth. I think about farming life on the property and the early settlers who would have enjoyed this room for breaking bread with family after a long, weary day. In 1790, the mostly Scottish-Irish population of the town Peterborough had 100 farms, nearly eight people per farm. Life was centered around farming during the weekdays. On the weekends, the church and tavern were long journeys by horse. In 1790, beef, swine, and dairy were the heart of the farm’s income, along with garden potatoes, pumpkins, assorted green vegetables, apples, and berries. In 1796, land use was divided between pasture (9%), hay (4%), cultivated (2%), and the remaining (85%), which was wild. The days would have been long and arduous. I often think about the many lifetimes of joys, sorrows, births, deaths, and other milestones slipping into the cracks of time below the floorboards; so much of it lived in this room.
Great Grandmother Amanda
Great-Grandmother Amanda
Writing this story prompted me to shift my perspective with a forensic eye. Last week, I waited until dark to pull out our large powerful camping light, the kind that can spot a deer on a cloudy night from a great distance. I wanted to fully appreciate the history of this room without distraction, and, truth be told, I wanted to see if the sound would come back to me.
What could this room tell me about the past? Maybe that’s why the house speaks to me the way it does, with its creaks and playful light. I skim the surface of knowing and not knowing in this house, history beyond reach. It was time for a little creative sleuthing. In the quiet of the night, I stood before the portrait of my husband’s great-grandmother Amanda, a woman I call “GG Amanda.” Born in Iowa in 1867, she lived a full life until her passing in 1941. The portrait has made the rounds between a few family homes since then. She arrived at our doorstep in New Hampshire two years ago, and since then, has settled into our Keeping Room.
The Night Scene:
GG Amanda quietly commands the room, the matriarch of time. The weight of the painting is substantial, I brace myself as I lean in to lift her off the wall. Just as I place my hands on the 19th century gold portrait frame, I feel a vibration that nearly knocks me off my feet. I look back at the painting and see her move slightly. I pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming. The scene is reminiscent of the magical talking portraits at Hogwarts, in the land of Harry Potter. GG Amanda looks miffed. She looks at me in a judgmental way, the way my second grade teacher, Mrs. Whittier, did when I made a mistake on my handwriting practice worksheet. The sound is eerily similar,
‘Excuse me, young lady, what do you think you are doing?’
I am startled, speechless, the same way I was in Mrs. Whittier’s class. I look around the room to see if anyone else is witness to this. Has the hourglass of time transported me to another realm?
I don’t care for her tone and wonder if I should carry the painting to my husband on the other side of the house and let him deal with her. After all, she is his blood relation. Instead, I say, ‘I am sorry, have I hurt you?’ Her tone shifts a little, ‘No, but I like the view from where I am, must you move me? I have a lovely view from this perspective.’
I turn to look out the window and see the moon rising over the mountain, I have to agree, she is right about the views, especially on a full moon.
I say, “It will only be for a short time, I need to have a look behind you.”
Her eyebrow arches quizzically, ‘Well, that won’t be easy, will it? You do know there is a solid wall behind me.’
Typical, I think, his side of the family, always pointing out the obvious. I lean in closely, “Yes, I do know that, but perhaps you could help me?” Her brow softens as I explain my quest,
“I was told that a hearth like ours often had a beehive-shaped brick oven alongside it. With the passage of time, they were removed or sealed behind a wall, hidden from view. I noticed slight separations between the 12” pine wood panels behind you and am going to move you to have a look.”
She asks, ‘And how do you plan to see into the wall?’
I reach for my flashlight, shining it in her face, and say “With this.”
Clearly agitated, she says ‘Good grief, young lady, put that thing down, are you trying to blind me?’
I flick the light off, and tell her,
“I am just going to move you for a few minutes.”
Before she can reply, I hoist the painting up with both hands, gently removing it from the wall and place her on the floor, against the corner of the dining table so she can watch me.
‘That’s better,” she says, ‘So what next?’
I reach for the flashlight again.
“Shhh” I say, “I need to concentrate.”
I can hear her muttering under her breath and accidentally (not really) flash the light her way before turning to focus on the wall. With my flashlight, I stretch the light up and down the wall, top to bottom, like a lighthouse signaling to mariners on a stormy night. Between the panels on the wall, something catches my eye. Patiently and slowly, I peer into the thin dark strips between the panels. It seems I have piqued great-grandmother Amanda’s curiosity too.
She asks excitedly, ‘What do you see?’
In the few moments it took to peer through the passage, I feel like I have traveled in time, back to 1790. I am so excited, if I could have morph myself into a tiny creature to pass between the wall, I would have.
I say, '“I can see the same slim bricks that line our fireplace. I am guessing I found the beehive oven.”
Stepping back a bit further, I pass the light over the wall looking for more openings between the panels. A little bit further along the wall, with just a sliver of light, I look into it and say, “I can see old structural support beams and what appears to be another wall.”
I mention, “The wall you hang on is an inside wall, hiding what was once a staircase passage from the front entrance to the second floor. The staircase was moved to another section of the house long ago, and a wall was placed over the entrance to the old staircase.” I turn to face her to see if she is listening.
She says ‘Well, I could have told you that. I hear all sorts of things at night, you wouldn’t believe what I hear, it sounds like a cast of thousand characters in a play! Quite annoying when you just want a little peace and quiet.’
I laugh, wondering if there was a mistake in the magical land of talking paintings. I shudder at the thought of my old school teacher, Mrs. Whittier, in my life again.
I have a lightbulb moment, “Well, perhaps you could help me from time to time.”
She listens intently as I say, “I have a lot of secrets to unlock in this house, if you can talk to people who lived here, perhaps we could work together?”
She looks up to the ceiling, a reminder that she doesn't like being on the floor. Then she smiles, ever so slightly.
‘Well, perhaps I could help. You know, the farmer who lived here 200 years ago was telling me the other day…’
I stopped her, “Wait, you can speak to the people who lived in this house before us?”
She smiles, ‘Well, of course I can, dear; what else am I going to do just hanging around here all day?’
My imagination is firing on all fronts, like the shooting game at a carnival, and I am about to win the prize. I wonder what to do next. I look at great-grandmother Amanda, and she kindly says,
‘You look tired dear, perhaps you could turn off the flashlight and hang me back up. I am feeling a little weary after all the excitement this evening. It has been 82 years since I was laid to rest (1941), I haven’t had this much fun in years.’
I agree and gently pick her up and hang the painting on the wall. I turn off the flashlight and contemplate if it is worth removing a section of the wood paneling to unveil the historic view behind the wall but decide against it in case I have the wrath of great-grandmother Amanda after me. She says, ‘Thank you for an interesting evening. Shall we do it again? I would be happy to talk with Farmer Joseph and all the other lovely souls who come along to warm themselves by your fire. I am sure they could help you with your quest.’
I decided I like this softer side of GG Amanda.
“Yes,” I say, “I would like that.”
A moment later, her brow arches sternly again; looking at my flashlight, she says
‘And would you please leave that abomination of a light behind next time?’
I agree. We both look out the window; the moon sits higher in the sky, telling me it is past my bedtime. I wonder how many others before me looked up to the moon from the same window as they settled into slumber. I turn to ask GG Amanda, and she is gone, back into her painterly world. Asleep until the next time.
I woke up in the morning thinking about GG Amanda and the endless possibilities of our encounter. I wonder how many books our stories might fill. They say, “If this old house could talk,” Well, I have one that can. And we haven’t even talked about the attic yet.
Beyond the keeping room, a staircase leads to the second level with two small bedrooms. The real magic is in the attic. The staircase has a steep pitch up with a low ceiling. Everyone has to duck their head as they approach. It reminds me of the ascent up to a child’s tree house. Sized just right for them but awkward for adults. The attic room feels like a secret space, reminiscent of the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis's book, The Chronicles of Narnia. A steeply pitched ceiling and original wood beam run the room's full length. Either side of the space has a set of child-size built-in drawers and a small bookcase with a closet on each end. I often hear the faint whisper of children squealing with laughter each time I visit the attic. I wonder how GG Amanda would feel about me carrying her up for a visit.
Walking down from the attic to the Keeping Room, I hear the otherworldly sound again and feel a soft tingle run up my spine, initiating a deep breath as I lift my shoulders and release. I have come to love living in this house and the person I have become, stitched into its very being. The peaceful landscape of memories beguiles me, and now, the painting of great-grandmother Amanda and the many adventures to come.
“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”
― May Sarton
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