Well, it wasn’t a relationship I planned. I’d never have given a second look had I been in my right mind — I thought the whole affair was going to be a sidebar thing; never in life my celestial soul mate.
When I came to Massachusetts in 2005 to work the Green River Festival and visit a friend in Ashfield, I was struck by the prescient notion that I might sometime in the distant future meander this lovely direction, and thus decided to buy the little house next door to my friend, as a rental. I knew this house was not my house, not the house I would ever want to live in; it would be a house I rented to others, kind of a placeholder in this sweet town. This house was a business partner, not a significant other.
Then, before I made it back to New Orleans, a hurricane killed my home there, the house I loved and had decorated to my everlasting taste. Katrina filled it with swamp water, rendering it completely inhabitable, so that suddenly, the only standing house I had to live in was the one in I had just bought in Ashfield. The one I didn’t love, the one I only wanted to set up with others. Most people would see my impulsive purchase of the Massachusetts house as the Hand of an Almighty Merciful Fate, and I understood that, but at that moment I didn’t care. I wanted my house — the one in New Orleans. The one with my consecrated stuff in it. I saw my Ashfield rescue house like a forest I didn’t understand. It was small, confettied with the dust of centuries, having been built around the time the U.S. Constitution was signed. The supports in the dirt-floor basement were trees with bark still on them.
The house came with furniture; the people moving out were carrying on to Alaska and weren’t interested in taking much with them, which was fine, as all of my beloved furniture had become alligator beds. I needed furniture here, however, and was too steeped in loss to decorate a house that I recognized could leave without warning.
But all of that was secondary. In my new life I was also opening a restaurant, one that required all my time for the next 13 years, so that the house became a place only to sleep, as there was so much to do at Elmer’s. It remained a stranger I had a casual acquaintance with, but it never became my house, even 13 years in.
Then, in 2017 my dad passed away and all 63 years of my parents’ collective possessions moved into the house with me. Ten months after his passing I sold Elmer’s and suddenly my house became a full-on warehouse — a place you don’t let people into, lest they think you’re a hoarder. I was a hoarder, of long-buried memories stuffed in boxes that lined the walls and filled the rooms. I tried working my way through it, but slowly, hamstrung by all the emotions I still held at arm’s distance.
And then! Last month the Almighty Hand of Fate stepped in again, demanding work be done on this 200-year-old structure. New windows were needed to replace disintegrating ones, and, more important, it needed electrical work! Ninety-two-year-old Norm Nye thinks his dad wired this house in 1915 and it now needed an update, for some reason. Suddenly I was sharing my house with a team of electricians, all day, every day and they had to get to the walls, behind the stuff. Oh crap.
Adam and Brian drilled through wood beams dense as iron, they said, because everything had been built of chestnut — New England’s sturdiest material. “This is a very well-built house!” they reported daily, wiping their brows of frustration.
It is?
They pulled away well-seated furniture and pointed to the floor. “Look where the boards get narrower. This was the whole original house. See this indentation? The original outside wall.”
That 116-square-foot area had been the house — the whole thing. Suddenly, fearfully cold 18th century homesteaders, desperate to finish the place before winter, took up residence in my imagination as I stood, looking around. My old house had been their new beginning, too.
“And then, they added the upstairs!” We climbed the narrow staircase, the smallness of which finally made sense, and saw where the expanded house had stood 10 feet wide by 12 feet deep and two short stories tall. “Yeah look! Here’s the original chimney, behind this wall!” The ghosts took form with their children, huddling, I saw now, by the fireplace.
“This part here? It was the passageway to the barn. This — see how the floorboards go? This was a porch! And all of this? The kitchen was the barn, added later.” I could see the builders, needing space, adding children, making decisions,
In the basement Adam cursed the new foundation made of pine still young enough that even it was hard to drill through.
New foundation? This house doesn’t have a new foundation.
“Yes it does — looks like somebody picked the whole thing up and put a new foundation in — look at this.”
I looked. It was new, pressure-treated wood. The foundation I’d shuddered to ignore was suddenly solid.
The generations became real people, building the house they wanted, the one they needed. While Adam and Brian worked, I cleaned. And sorted and took things to the dump every day it was open. I found character in rooms I’d seen as storage. I found warmth in rooms I’d previously disdained. And daily, my house matured into my friend. I drink tea in its warm kitchen and we talk. I like its personality. I love its strength. I want to be a part of its history.
I’m still looking for a color to paint the outside, but it’s not just a favorite color anymore; it’s a reflection of the house’s temperament, a disposition I’ve evolved to respect, admire and Lord Heaven, even come to love.
Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.