Houses of Wood, Memories of Bone - A Short Story

I'd been peeling wallpaper for most of the morning, sweat dripping down my forehead, lighting on my tongue, tasting of the essence of me, salt and earth.

At first, the movements were enjoyable, the evening light coming in not as dimness, but bright as silver, the sun streaming through it, as if a sieve.  For a while I enjoyed the repeated motions, as I scraped the paper from old walls, free of obligations but to this task, its unique sight and unique smell, reminiscent of old books in an ancient library.  After about an hour, shaving never quite vertical pieces of paper from walls that steadfastly hold on to it, as if it was all that was supporting it's very structure, I was regretting not only my decision to tackle this job by myself, but to own a home at all.

A beer would be good, I thought to myself.  It would  cool me off a bit while I take a rest.  After another half hour of labor,  a second cold beer was warranted.  At that point it became not so much a task but a philosophical discourse with not just the house, but myself, seeing into the violated walls, not just a simple task of unpainted wood and sweat, but the very existences of  mortality and the doom of mere flesh.

When I started thinking about a third beer, I realized that philosophy would soon give way to either poems rhyming with Nantucket or off key sea shanties and  I realized I either needed
(a) a break
(b) C4
or
(c) a professional.

I called it quits for the night and went and got a long shower.

It was the bathroom in my last house.  My current house also has wallpaper, but it's of the textured, solid colored type, that from a few feet away looks like the paint that's in the other rooms and is in a condition it can stay up for another 2-3 years while the kitchen and more structural projects are completed.  It's a soothing color, a cool green resting place, that spot to where I always circle back to, like a wheel, hubbed in that place that can't be placed on a map, but steadfastly exists.

THAT wallpaper, on that long ago day, however, was what happened when someone had a three martini lunch and then let their Mother in Law pick out the wallpaper.  It could only be described as "Olive Garden" meets "Rocky Horror Picture Show", with flowering trellis's, bright flowers and grapes that looked as if they were bleeding O Positive.

And it covered the entire kitchen. We won't mention the foot tall cherubs that wound their way around the entire border of the master bed and bath.

The house was on a big pond, a wall of windows, corn fields behind that, yet close enough to shops of a small town that if Dad wanted to walk to the store for a six pack and some cheese he could. For with a diagnosis of late stage cancer in my Stepmother just before I bought it, he had mentioned moving in with me when she was gone.  For him,  I could deal with the wallpaper in the bedroom, kitchen and bath.

No one told me how hard wallpaper was to remove though. I tried the usual methods, spray on "easy wallpaper remover" which was about as effective as Congress just before recess. I tried sheer force and heat. In sheer desperation I resorted to swearing in Swedish (my Grandfather was a Swedish lumberjack, it's in the genes) But mostly it just took moisture and a tool sharper than muscle or wit. By the time I was halfway through the task, the wallpaper was Tokyo and I was Godzilla.

Sometimes when we start something we have no idea what it is going to entail. 

I'm not naturally "Miss Home Improvement", but it never stopped me. There is a photo of my Dad and I that I still have.  I'm probably 3 or 4 years old, in my little coveralls and painters cap "helping" my Dad paint the house. I honestly had more paint on me than the house. He didn't criticize though, letting me learn. For the last few years, Big Bro and I did most of the house upkeep for him, since that day I came home and found Dad on a ladder, with the leaf blower, trying to blow leaves out of the gutters. You think, as your parents age, that one day you'll have to take away the car keys, NOT the ones to the storage shed.

The serious stuff (rewiring/chimney) Dad pays for professionals, the little stuff I do now that Big Bro is gone.  There are bars to hold on to in both bathrooms to help in around the toilet and shower. There's a railing off the front porch, painted to match the trim, so he has something to balance on as he goes down two steps to water the plants. There's new linoleum tiles in the kitchen, and those 1970's orange beaded "drapes" Mom put up in the laundry room and one bath were replaced with some beautiful lace curtains found at a thrift store.

I've also found homes with family members or Amvets for some of the clutter that made it difficult for him to navigate in the dark.  A few small  but good chairs that were never used, decorative tables, all found a place.  That men's suit rack, you know those waist high contraptions that sit in a bedroom, holding your good clothes all neatly (as if you don't own a closet). Well, after bumping into that while getting up in the middle of the night while in the one bedroom with A.C. while Dad was in the hospital recently,  I thought for a moment there'd been a home invasion by a well dressed midget, and almost put a round of .45 through it. THAT got tossed.

But I enjoyed all of it, even the back breaking work. Perhaps I'm odd in this thought, but like some automobiles, I feel that an old  house is like a living thing, in how you care for it, react to it, trust it or hate it, simply accept it or love it.  I occasionally come across one in late hours of the night that has burned to the ground with the force of fates conflagration and in my tired brain I wonder if it knew, like some centurion whose mind has gone; did you know what has happened to you, do you even know you have died?

The time and relationships with such things have served a purpose. I've done things I didn't think I was clever or strong enough to do.  I learned some things one should NOT do  A bench vice works much better than your knees and a Bush Hog can do many outdoor heavy tasks, with perhaps not the ease of explosives, but with better odds of the police not showing up.

I've also learned about planning, about having supplies on hand, how to work as a team, and how to put one's ego aside and simply ask for help.  Anything of value takes work and upkeep.  That includes you. Sometimes you can do it on your own, sometimes you need the help of your friends.

 

Looking around now, I see so much done so very much still to do.  In the shop are so many tools, the cold brilliance of cutting edges, the precision of measurements, small and large objects that are more use than ornamentation.  They are spread out across the work surfaces, so diverse, yet somehow connected, that when the eye catches upon them, the mind sees an impression of action, of motion, still there in memory.

Up above are the journals, the books of instruction, in woodworking, in gunsmithing, in plumbing, many of them old, written when this house was still new, the basic skills still valued, even if the supplies have changed. I love reading of the small advances back then in what now would be considered commonplace. With them, are some books of leisure reading, should I wish to just sit down in a chair here while something rests in wait of the next step.

 

The books, all so old, and so varied, like individuals for all are bound differently, all have weathered time in their own way.  One is bright white and gold like the vestments of a Priest who on Sunday morning dons his finery and puts all of his burden onto a table to be consumed by the fire.  Others are plain, dark black covers, lined up in a row as if in a funeral procession, quietly waiting there in the darkness to be necessary. Then there are the newer ones, one bright green, another the color or a penny, as open as children, just asking to be picked up and gently held like small treasure.

 

Upon another shelf at home is a small collection of bones. Sometimes all I find are bones, laid bare to the elements, or burned clean. With the right temperature all things will burn, yet bone itself stubbornly resists all but the hottest of fires. Even when all the carbon is burned from it, bone will still retain it's shape. An insubstantial ghost of itself, it crumbles easily, the last bastion of the person's being transformed into ash. Yet in that ash remain large pieces, calcined and with the consistency of pumice, yet when held in the hand, almost seeming to posses a trace of warmth from within their core, as if still alive.

Some days I will pick one up and gently touch it, as I have a hundred of times before, endlessly fascinated.. I have studied bones untouched by anything but time. I have studied bones in fragments, co mingled with hundreds of others, burned and broken and laid bare to the elements. Still, I am always fascinated by the strength of that which is unfleshed. They are what lies at the center of us, not the heart, but that part of us that is the last thing to ever be dissolved, even if cut or disassembled or burned. It is the hardest, strongest most unwavering part of us, that which supports us, the last piece of us that remains of this earth, when everything else is lost. It's the surviving remnant of all that was dear to us.

But even the strongest of bone can be broken under the fragility of human flesh, as fate resolves us of all integrity, leaving us as wrenched asunder of all that was, smells of cooling flesh and salty tears, illusions of ice and rain and fire, detached and secret, yet oh so familiar. With these moments we pick ourselves up, and begin to rebuild.

 

So here in this space are the tools so that a hundred year old house can maintain its strength as my soul regains mine.  For I've learned, that your relationship with an old house is not much different than your relationship with people.  It was standing there long before you came along, and if you leave, it will still be standing, either better or worse for knowing you. It has existed before, perhaps, you drew breath, and may well exist  after you are gone, long after those things which reflect in mirrored surfaces, cease to be, and are replaced.

You can curse at it, words as hard as friction, make demands upon its  form, strike blows of physical violence against it as you attempt to pull some order out of superficial chaos. But whatever you do to it, the supports, the things that hold it together, even if hidden, will remain.

It's easy to forget that behind the whitewash and paint, that which has been updated for the times, lies symmetrical brick and old wood beams, things that hold fast what time attempts to change. But sometimes you remember, sometimes catch a small glimpse of it, the delicate and ineffacable mark of its retrospection in one of its windows, those shiny surfaces from which the world is viewed.

It cares not that you have a piece of paper that says you possess it, or if you are just renting.  It is as it was designed to be, and though you can effect the outward form, or perhaps even the function, it is as it was designed, by the grand architect. The American Indians believed that even the inanimate has a spirit, for although something may be made by man, it was made with materials provided by God, and therefore is sacred. Sitting in this old house, looking through the light of the stained glass windows, I can believe.  For there is sacred space in that which we keep, which we hold deer, even the intimate, our responsibilities awakened in that solemn recognition.

If you are fortunate, treating it with care, overlooking its defects, you can share either briefly or for a lifetime, this point in space with such things.  When that time is over, you will find, that short of the rending of the earth itself, its foundation remains, even as it outwardly changes, much like yourself. For behind the paint and the polish, lies still, steadfast bones from which one's house is built.

 - Brigid