On leaving a house
I stood at the top of the stairs. To my left, hanging on the navy blue grasscloth-covered wall were the first three prints I had ever framed of my daughter’s childhood creative output: a series of paintings she made at the age of 3 in the months following 9/11. Beyond that wall, in the guest bedroom, stood my great-grandmother’s armoire, with its beveled looking glass, brass hardware, and delicate key on a blue satin ribbon. Looking down the narrow steps in front of me was the chevron runner I had chosen because it reminded me of the graphic, black-and-white diamond-patterned carpeting my parents had installed in the entrance hallway in the Italianate Victorian home I’d grown up in in the Finger Lakes. Beyond the chevron underfoot, I could see straight out to the bluestone steps and white porch banister while the foraged pussy willow wreath hanging on the open front door served as yet another reminder of my childhood environs.
This house, a Greek Revival in the hamlet near where we now live in the Northern Catskills, was the first I’d ever owned. It is an old house that, while regal, can’t be taken seriously as an old house. Its lovely 1840s lines and spaces, with iconic twelve-over-twelve and six-over-six blown glass windows, along with its stately columns and scale, were met in the 1950s with an additional wing that attempted to match its grandeur, but also brought a unique mid-century flair. Backyard-facing picture windows, an intercom system, red formica kitchen countertops and polka dot wallpaper were among the stylistic interlopers. Having grown up in an old house that took itself very seriously, I loved the subtle humor in the mash-up of two eras in this house.
By the time we came here, we had already established ourselves in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. That place was the cozy hub of our family’s “working life.” We had moved to the city as newlyweds to be close to friends and make our professional lives. Manhattan gave us each what we needed, while providing a vibrant childhood and great educational opportunities for our daughter. We embraced all that New York City offers, while returning each night to our little “ship in the sky,” as we called the fourth-floor walkup on the Upper East Side. Owning a house was different.
If the apartment in New York City meant stability and validation for the urban life we had created for our nucleus of three—adding this house twelve years ago to our lives meant respite, refuge, and a particular kind of dreaming.
As I stood at the top of the stairs six weeks ago, pausing for a moment during the wave of sorting, packing, shedding, transporting that is emptying a house so that it can be sold, I felt the pangs of letting go.
Our first summer, in 2008, after being in this house a few short months, we hosted friends and family for 65 nearly-consecutive nights, receiving anywhere from two to eight people at a time, and various dogs. It was exhilarating, memorable, and in the fall of that year, we swore never to do it that way again.
What followed was ten years of family life in which, in addition to the sprawled-out intimacy of three people, there was always something social to look forward to. Frequent holidays spent with our families visiting, lounging in pajamas, with and without fires in fireplaces and firepits, enormous and creative cooking, weekend visits and meals with neighbors and new friends who had already found their way happily to this remote hamlet. Piles of leaves, wildflowers, snowstorms, bats, slumbering deer, kettling vultures, flying squirrels, a bear, a bobcat, foxes, a puppy. Friends taking up the challenge of finding us where GPS still doesn’t easily track and curious enough to want to spend the weekend hiking, trawling for antiques and artisanal treasures. Rural diners. Game nights, ping-pong and karaoke wars. Badminton on the grass and reading and sipping under umbrellas. Movie productions and sewing afternoons. Cupcake decorating and gingerbread baking. If, starting today, I never host another dinner party, or family Christmas, my life has been full.
While I thought the social dimension of this big, inviting house would be most memorable, I realized as I packed that the comfort of its isolation was equally important.
In the early years we would arrive late on Friday nights if we managed to visit on a weekend. By the time we would leave the Interstate for 30 more minutes of rural roads leading to this destination, it would be close to 10 p.m. The last five-mile stretch, a long sleepy descent on County Route 351 to the hamlet, was my favorite time. As we drove closer, two separate church steeples, lit from below, their spires reaching the treetops high above the hollow that the town nestled in, drew in and out of the view as the car descended. Those spires rising out of darkness and the deep quiet of Main Street late on a Friday night were my exhale for the week. I felt discreetly welcomed, embraced by the warm arms of a town that didn’t need to hear my news right away, would happily wait until Saturday or Sunday for my participation, or allow me to rest and recharge for two days without making any demands.
The house itself was discreet, too. I came to know some of its history over time: it served as the town’s post office in the 1930s. A neighbor’s grandmother had had a mink farm in the back yard at one point. A prominent family hosted their six grandchildren in the house each summer, following the mid-century renovation. Several young people had rented the house in the period just before we bought it. A massage therapist had her table in the bedroom that I eventually used as an office. The house lived many lives before we inhabited it, and I always wondered what residues those lives contained. Many a night, everyone fast asleep, I would find myself awake, listening, waiting to hear from the house—her complaints, her stories, her secrets. She largely kept them to herself. The message I always received at that hour was, goodnight, your happiness is safe here.
Much later, I did learn a story about the house that, if true, is very dark, and I listened anew for a recounting. None came. The house held me, us, in her gentle protection, allowing the sounds of the nearby creek, or the winter winds and spring rains to be the ones that dominated.
This house graciously shared the limelight with the wild beauty of this area, a part of the Hudson Valley seemingly forgotten, or perhaps, never found in the first place. Her large slate terrace in the back, suspended a full story above the backyard leading to the creek allowed for easy lounging in the sun, listening to the birds, watching the deer, groundhogs, skunks and occasionally, fishers, in the grass, along with outdoor gathering. The house never sulked if we spent our days in the 2000-acre nature preserve that began at the end of Main Street, or ventured further, to the Northern Catskills or the Helderberg Escarpment for hiking and other forms of outdoor contemplation.
The house itself gave us a place in this town to get to know its wonderful people. It gave us a place to return to as we mapped ourselves in more permanently, having discovered a nearby 50 acres that we now live on. As we moved on just four miles away, this house gave us the ability to let friends experience living here, friends who’ve now found their own places that they love in the wake of being visitors.
There is a piece of wisdom about places, which to me includes houses, that I’ve held on to since first reading about ten years ago in a book called Mountain Goddesses: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage: “People and places where they reside are engaged in a continuing set of exchanges; they have determinate, mutual effects upon each other because they are part of a single, interactive system.”
The fullness of life I sought 12 years ago is what manifested in this house. As I leave, I hope that the “mutual effects” we had on one another include some residue of that fullness, and that it buoys up its current and future inhabitants—quietly, of course. I’m not geographically far from the house today, but the terrain here, both physical and psychic, is much different. The treasures of having lived in the house on Main St.—be they furnishings or memories—are making their home here now, where too, there is respite, refuge, and dreaming.
