Household Spirits

When I was a kid, my family moved around a lot. Not geographically– we stayed in the same general area– but into and out of a series of different houses. My parents were young and restless and somewhat unhappy, and I think they believed that a new home would solve their problems. And so my childhood memories are tinted and defined by which house we lived in at the time. 

Their choices ranged from a new suburban split-level designed by my mother, to a dilapidated farmhouse that looked about to collapse before my father made some hasty repairs and slapped wallpaper and paneling over the crumbling plaster. Every house promised a new start, a new and happier family. I was always excited by these moves, and eager to explore every corner of my new world. There were hiding places to find, and discovering which steps creaked and what shadows fell on the bedroom walls at night. And wonderful left-behind bits of debris that provided hints about the previous occupants. They were mysterious and absent, yet strangely there, too. We had picked up a life that someone else had left behind.

And at the same time I had a very early sense that a part of my spirit was attached to the place I was leaving. Even as a child I would go through the empty house and say thank you to the empty rooms, and tell the house not to be sad, that it was not the house’s fault that we were leaving. And sometimes I would imagine what part of our family was left behind. Was there an errant rubber ball under the porch, a barrette beneath the radiator, a marble behind the refrigerator? Who might find those things and hold them and imagine me?

In my earliest independent years, I followed the example of my parents and moved whenever I needed a change of scenery. And for most of those years I owned so little that I could move in a pick-up truck. Those places felt temporary, but I left even the most dismal of student apartments with my ritual benediction. 

It was not until I was well into adulthood that I lived anywhere long enough to develop a long term relationship with a house. Alexis and I bought our first house together under a string of unusual and uncertain circumstances: a realtor we didn’t entirely trust, a broken air conditioner, a flea infestation, and a tenant who wouldn’t leave. Not only did we literally pass the previous occupant in the doorway while we were moving in, but he left a truck load of his most unsavory possessions behind. This was a house with baggage. Many people knew it as a place that had once appeared in Metropolitan Home, decorated in a flamboyant style with a Japanese garden in the back. Now, some 10 years after the death of the decorator, the property is overgrown with weeds, and known as a place to obtain drugs. We spent 20 years making it our own. 

For a while we felt as though we were camping out in someone else’s story. But we cleaned and painted and hung our pictures on the walls. Since we didn’t have the money to fix everything that needed improvement, we did a lot of DIY projects, learning by doing, adding our blood, sweat and tears to the wood, plaster and stone. Slowly, as we could afford it, we made the big changes that improved our daily life: privacy fences, a remodeled bathroom with a functional shower, and finally a new kitchen. Gradually the house became ours. We knew every dimension and dysfunction, every midnight noise; we knew what was behind the walls, and under the loose board in the closet floor. When we looked around, every fixture and color represented our choices, not attempts at making the best of someone else’s choices.

And in that time we had a strong sense that the spirit of the house was suspicious of us at first but eventually grew to embrace us, as we lived in the house with a deep respect for it. And perhaps that thought represents more personification of the house and its spirits than is defensible. But even though I am skeptical of most supernatural beliefs, I think I have always sensed the rightness of a human dwelling absorbing the psychic and emotional energy of its occupants. And I have always felt those stirrings in each place I lived. 
It was hard to leave the house we had grown into, loved and made our own. The neighborhood, not the house itself, finally urged us into a calmer and more stable location. We said good-byes with many tears. I felt as though our energy was a part of the house that would always be there.

Moving into a new old house means changing your habits and your possessions. It also means living with a new set of energies. And you are a stranger for a while, waiting for the house to show you what it wants and needs from you, at the same time imposing your will on it. It is ours in the legal and financial sense, but it will only really become ours when we have touched every square inch, and found the hiding places and creaky stairs; when we have danced for joy at some wonderful news and sat in a dark room not holding back tears.

I sense there was some disturbance here. We think an early occupant was involved in alcohol smuggling during prohibition, and another was known to threaten the city workers with a gun when they came to cut down a tree. But I also think that this house has been deeply loved and respected, as evinced by the fact that the original woodwork and floors, and even a stenciled frieze design, are all intact and well-preserved after 100 years. And I accept the responsibility of stewardship. Because it is not only our home, but something we want to survive and outlive us. 
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And so we move into another phase of life, letting this house change us, and giving it our energy and time and care. This house seems to be opening to us, responding to our attention.  I always seek that sense of refuge, for me the meaning of home: a place where you always feel surrounded by acceptance and safety.  And I realize too, that even though the past is always a character in the life of an old house, the present is ultimately the most important moment. We sit at our dining table on a sunny April afternoon. The collage of our house’s past and the pastiche of our experiences converge in a simple truth. The place we inhabit inhabits us.