"Windows, Walls and Wars" (Nov. 2009)

I am becoming part of an old house story, or an old house's story, or more accurately, a new old house's story. I have lived for nearly 17 years in an old simple farmhouse in the country, enjoying the open starry vistas and mountain sunsets and the many pleasures of rural living while occasionally chafing at maintenance left neglected by the landlords. As with all things in life, pages turn, chapters end, and new ones begin.

So this story moves on to a 3-story frame house built in 1900, the birth year of my grandfather for whom I am named. It sits on a dirt road within walking distance of a Quaker village founded in 1745, and between two cemetaries, the Quakers and the African-American Baptist church. It is humble yet sturdy, and has alternated between periods of loving care and neglect.

I am getting to know its stories from within as I work, peeling back the most recent pages to find what lies beneath. I grow familiar with its sounds, and its character - wood floors of pine and oak, glowing single-pane windows seemingly perfectly aligned for natural light, and its lack of a single straight floor or wall.

It has seen much in its 109 years, and as I work I have time to reflect on those stories, often aided by the public radio voices that keep me company. I did not realize the milestones that passed this autumn until I let myself get caught up in its history; 70 years since Hitler's blitzkrieg of eastern Europe unleashed World War II, 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall that left so many of us hopeful about a more peaceful future, 8 long years since the tragedy of 9/11 punctuated a new chapter of violence in human history.

The elderly African-American woman who passed away and left this house for a lucky family like us to acquire certainly saw much. No doubt the segregation all around in mid-20th century Virginia permeated even here. How different the childhoods of the last generation that grew up in this house must have been from my Madeleine, who loves the empty house that Daddy is working on like her own already.

These all seem like stories from a well-worn book in this house. My footsteps echo as I walk from one empty room to another to collect a tool, or begin another patch job. It is like a life of literature - each year's layer of soil on the yard, the aging of the wood in the floors - all whispering bits and pieces of history. I am content to listen, and collect scraps as they come, and grateful for their gifts as well as the shelter of the sturdy tin roof high above our heads. Our chapters here will begin soon enough.