Thoughts About Home by Deborah

Coming Home

Earlier this year, I published my book “Where the Heart Is – Essays on Home” as an eBook. This essay is another that I’ve written and is part of a new collection of essays on home that I’m gathering. Watch for the publication!

Many people have purchased “Where the Heart Is – Essays on Home.” I’ve received many wonderful comments. Thank you.

Please take a moment to go to the site where you purchased the book and rate it. I will be grateful if you recommend it to others.

"Where the Heart is" (Kindle Edition)

"Where the Heart Is" (EPUB Edition For Apple, Nook, & Adobe Editions)

_____

Last night the moon, the full round moon, shown in our bedroom window, bathing the sheets with
the softest light.  Such a balm.  I left the drapes open.  I wanted to sleep in the moonlight.

Now it is morning.  A bird chirps over and over again just outside the library window.  A fire hums to itself in the fireplace and the sky has changed each time I’ve glanced up and out the window, the early magentas fading to blue and rising into pale pink all in a moment’s glance. 

Most of the trees on the court have lost their leaves, exposing the elegant carriage of their bare branches.  I’m still waiting for the one fell swoop of the gingko’s leaves.  They are nearly there, nearly that brilliant yellow that precedes the sudden fall.  Gone, it will seem, in one swift moment.

I feel as if I’ve finally come home.  Louisville.  It was first my father’s hometown.  He was raised not far from where I live now.  These streets were the streets of his childhood.  He played tennis in Central Park and football for the old Male High.  The last time he and I walked this area, he told me about each of the families who’d lived in the houses on Floral Terrace and Park between Sixth and Seventh.  The fruit vendor, the Lutheran minister, the L&N engineer, the single ladies.  He showed me where he and his buddies had played football as children in the fading light of fall afternoons.  He pointed out his favorite house, the one on Ormsby, just the Sixth Street side of Ormsby Court.

My father raised us far from the city in a brand new house.  He wanted something better for us.  It was the post war dream of men who’d left home as boys and returned as people hungry for a new beginning.  He never talked about the war with me and it wasn’t until his wake that I heard stories of what he’d endured out there in the South Pacific- 18 years old and far, far from these gracious streets.

I am his daughter and I’ve come home now. A generation later.  One night, shortly after we moved in, I had to park on Sixth Street and walk down the court.  As I struggled with my purse and briefcase and a plastic bag of groceries, I looked up and walking toward me from the far end of the Court, silhouetted against the ginkgo tree, was a man whose features I couldn’t discern but whose gait and body build were identical to my father’s.

My earliest memory of him was his return from work.  He’d suddenly appear on the sidewalk up the block from where we lived at the time.  My mother would give me permission to run to him and he’d gather me up in his arms and lift me high off the ground.   I thought he was the strongest man in the world.

My father is buried beneath a ginkgo tree.  The Chinese claimed it as a sacred tree, one to be revered.  I can see a ginkgo from my window here in our library.  It’s just after eight now and the sky is clear, the colors of dawn dispersed.

I’ll sleep again tonight in the moonlight and rejoice, in the quiet grace of this house, this place where I so ineffably belong.

Home is a place where the past reaches for the present and casts us into the future.  Safely. Safely.

 

Thrown Flowers

Cool tonight. Fatigue is welcome for a change, not a feeling I have to struggle against. A warm bed offering the weight of covers; a cup of hot tea; our house filled with overnight guests; the energy is just right.

St. James Art Show began today. I told David when I am deeply tired as I am this evening, I try to recall the sweetest moments of the day...beginning this morning with our five-year-old grandson  calling to me from the top of the stairs, then appearing in the doorway of the room where I sat sipping my coffee. He wore one of his grandfather's white undershirts as a nightshirt. He was barefoot. His dark hair was tousled from sleep. I set my coffee cup aside and reached to hug him. We walked together to the kitchen for a mug of hot chocolate...

Our daughter who is seven months pregnant with her first child arriving in our front hall having walked the six city blocks from her home, vividly beautiful in that way women are in the last weeks of pregnancy...

Beholding a large canvas filled with rich color, painted the artist told me with glass so that the light shimmered against the surface; selecting a red coffee cup; donning ear rings made from blown bits of glass; discussing a bronze sculpture with its creator as he described the welds and how he chose the name, "Peace in Motion"...

Wind in the green leaves; our rescued cat's purr against my palm; the scent of freshly baked bread, a flickering candle melting down within a deep glass, casting rimmed reflections against the silky curves of an old french chair...

How the dog has settled her head on her front paws; the tossed flowers offered to me by a man cleaning out his garden; how I know, as I snuff the last candle and climb the stairs to sleep, I will carry these moments into my dreams.

 

What We Bring

I knew the moment I stepped into the house where we live now that it was the one. I turned to the right and saw a room banked by french doors with leaded glass fan lights; to the left was the dining room with its eight walls, burnished a deep historic orange. I figured there would be bedrooms, a kitchen, and baths somewhere but they were not the deciding factor. It was the spirit of those first rooms that drew me close and made me feel at home. All these years later I feel the same way.

On a recent Saturday night we joined friends for dinner in a most unlikely setting, a small apartment, a third floor walk-up in an old house on Brook Street.  The house's front yard is rimmed with chain-link. The fire-escape hangs from the front of the house. It is a part of the neighborhood that is not entirely settled.  My friend is living there at the moment using furniture left by previous tenants.  She cooked an elegant meal which we ate by candle light and after dinner, before dessert, we observed a custom older than the house. The men remained in the parlor while the ladies withdrew to another space.

In this case, my friend and I climbed out the large center window of the front room onto the fire-escape. It was late by then; the sky was growing dark, wisps of pink fluttered as the day passed into night.  A moon was up, there was a breeze and from our perch, we could see the wind in the tree tops. I listened as a car pulled up out front. A woman opened the trunk and lifted out several bags. Had she been to Target? The grocery? When she opened the back door on the passenger side, a small boy stumbled onto the sidewalk. I could tell from his posture that he had been sleeping.  She took his hand and the two of them walked toward home. He cried the tears of a small child whose sleep has been interrupted.  I felt for each of them.

Up there on the fire-escape, Old Louisville's tree line blended in and around her magnificent roofs, tapered chimneys with their chimney pots. My friend and I have shared meals in France where she used to live. She has known a life of quiet sophistication. Before we left, I told our small party that our friend has the rare ability to enchant any room she possesses.

Each of us leaves a space where we have slept and dreamed, loved and wondered, known sorrow and deep joy, each of us leaves that space changed forever.  If we are yet present, the view becomes exquisite.  It's what we bring to the room, to the house, that matters.

All the Stars In the Sky

My grandson and I spend Thursdays together. We have since he was six weeks old. Over the past  four years we've had a chance to trade quite a few stories. I've learned what it is to see the world through the eyes of a child once more. He has learned about language from me. We've talked about opposites, about synonyms, about irony, the beauty of language, how to express what it is you feel exactly, simply. We've become experts at the game of "I love you more than....(all the stars in the sky, all the snow flakes there are, etc.)"

Today he made a special request. He wanted to see his great grandfather, David Laurence Stewart the First's House. Great Granddaddy has been gone for twenty years. I had no idea who lived in his house. But I said we would go. I said we'd take his trycycle and ride around the house.

The house sits on the corner of Edgehill Road and Walnut Place in the Highlands. I parked my car on the edge of the road in front of the Allison's house. Mr. Allison died earlier this year but I know that one of his sons will buy the house to keep it in the family and the family will continue to gather there for the holidays and other special occasions.

I pulled the trike out of the back of the station wagon and walked beside my grandson as he peddaled up the small incline of Walnut Place and turned around on the basketball pad that always doubled as a parking pad. I asked him which way he wanted to go next. He pointed back to Edgehill.

I stayed close as he made a sharp left down the hill onto Edgehill and then turned into the front drive of the house. What I didn't expect is that he would "park" his bike at the foot of the front stairs and say to the mail man who was on his way up to the mail box, " This is my great granddaddy's house." The mail man said "Really? What is his name?" To which my grandson said, "David Laurence Stewart." and the mail man responded, " Someone else lives here now."  and David IV shot back, "This is his house."

After the mailman left, we climbed the remaining steps to the front door and David asked if I would knock on the door because he wanted see inside. I told him I didn't know the people who lived here now and besides they might not be at home. He looked up at me with his solemn brown eyes and said, "They might be in the garage."

"Of course," I told myself. " Why didn't I think of that." I rang the doorbell. No response. Just as I turned away a car whipped into the drive and stopped abruptly to avoid hitting the trike. Then the garage door went open and the car pulled in. A woman and her young daughter emerged with a smile. I introduced myself and the woman said her parents had known the Stewarts and she was delighted to meet David and me. She and her daughter Isabelle took us on a full tour and it was lovely.

Later David the 4th said " Great Granddaddy's house is big. I never met a girl named Isabelle before."

Such a sweet and haunting way to end this year. His own father was just four when we had to explain that his grandmother had died in the upstairs bedroom. He asked us if we were joking and when we said we were not, he fell back in David's arms and wept.

Today, another four year old David Stewart stepped into that same bedroom with no sorrow, just the joy of curiosity and the wonder of his past, those who no doubt love him and surround him with those angels unaware.

Mid-summer Morning

The house we live in was built in 1891 on the same limestone that once supported the Southern Exposition. For those of you who may not know, the Southern Exposition (1883-1887) was a sort of mini-World's Fair that exhibited the latest in art, farm equipment and inventions. The building that housed this collection of wonders extended from Magnolia Avenue on the north to Hill Street on the South and from Fourth Street on the east to Sixth Street on the West.

 

When the building was disassembled in 1887, a man by the name of Slaughter bought the land and created what are now St. James, Belgravia and Fountain Courts. So, the limestone was recycled to sustain the houses of the courts and the roof slate was used to side a hospital and doctor's house built on Sixth Street in the 1890's and billed as the first hospital west of the Alleghenies dedicated exclusively to the treatment of women.

Today we call them Slate house and Junior Slate house. No longer a hospital and doctor's home, they now house an architect's office and condos.

 

Our house on Belgravia takes on a different slant of light depending on the season. It faces north so ours is the last side of the court to see snow and ice melt. Ours, too, is the last side to watch our Mountain Laurels spring into bloom or our Tulip Magnolia release her heavenly pink blossoms.

 

It is now mid-summer and cool enough to carry breakfast outside near the fountain in our small courtyard. What is it about the sound of running water that is such a comfort? I sip my hot coffee, listen to the mockingbird whose trill goes on and on from one song dipping into another, and relish the early morning. Last night I was awakened to the soft but persistent hoot of an owl in the magnolias.

 

I lay awake thinking about this house that I love, the timeless grace of it. The bed we sleep in was given to me by a childless couple in their nineties who were leaving their home of 47 years to move into assisted living. The bed had been a gift to the wife from a dear friend in Texas. It had been her friend's grandfather's bed. They gave me the bed with the promise that one day I would make of it a gift as well.

 

So, the night, the owl, the bed, the woman, all rest on the foundation stones of the building where Edison first displayed his 16 candle-powered light bulb. It is said in those days, families would gather before the Southern Exposition with dinner baskets and picnic on the grounds of what would later become Louisville's Olmsted designed Central Part. But long before Frederick Law Olmsted ever saw the land, these families sat transfixed waiting for dark when they would behold the dazzling display of Mr. Edison's single light bulb.

 

In the dark, I drift back to sleep waiting for morning in the arms of this old bed, held in the rooms of this old house, in mid-summer, lulled by the owl, to be awakened by the light with the bird whose song never seems to stop and whose variations are endless.

Best Friend

This will be our final spring in our house on Belgravia Court. 

In a few weeks, we will put our house on  the market and move on to another setting. At this time we have no idea where that will be but that’s okay. David and I are sure everything will fall into place when the time comes. In the meantime, we are looking at rentals as well as single family houses and condos. I’ve sent all our current documentation to a loan officer for pre approval and once we know for sure how we qualify , maybe we’ll write a contract or maybe we’ll check places on line in Hanoi or Savannah or someplace far away and rustic.

Since we’ve entered our sixties, everything has become relative.

Oh, wait a minute; this is supposed to be a real estate news letter. I almost forgot. Besides, any of you who know me very well know I would never move far away from my grandson.

 Let’s be honest. I am suddenly in the seller’s position. That means a lot of hard work, from the basement to the third floor! Staging a house for sale is not easy. The house must be clean, uncluttered and a little enchantment never hurts. I had a cousin who once told me she wanted to spend the night in our Jane Austen room on the third floor. That’s the fun part. Creating the magic in your home, letting the house speak to you in the way you have come to know it during the time the two of you have spent time together. My house is over a century old, so there’s already plenty of spirit in these bricks and mortar. I love these rooms and that helps bring out the best in each of us. Love always does that, you know?

All those projects you’ve put off come before you, front and center.  A check list is formed on the kitchen table and the two of you set about the arrangements. Junk day is March first: clean basement--check; closets are next--check; re-arrange pantries and kitchen cabinets-- check ; have kitchen floor refinished—check; have dining room patched painted—check; remove carpet from third floor and depending on condition of floors either clean or paint—check; install new medicine cabinet in third floor bath—check; sell or give away any unneeded furniture—check; wash windows – check; spread outdoor beds with pine straw and replace damaged post on deck; have flat portion of roof checked. Deal with it.

Sellers. My heart goes out to each and every one of you.

Now buyers. I understand. You have limits. We all do. Be reasonable. Do not shop outside of your range. There are bargains to be had but be reasonable. Be realistic.

Pray.

Call me.  I can help buyers AND sellers.  It’s hard. I know. I’m there. But it’s not all hard. It can be fun. Change doesn’t have to be all difficult. As a very wise five year old once told me. Change can be a kind of adventure. Even if it means leaving your best friend behind.

Deborah

Beautiful Dreams

The house is tired. Abandoned by her mistress of 40 years she is now used by the family for reunions at Christmas and St. James Art Show. Otherwise the place braves the seasons alone except for tenants on her back floors. Her lovely beveled glass front doors have a threatening note taped to them saying if one so much as touches them an alarm will summon the police with such a noise as would raise the dead.

 

Tenants now enter through a side door into a small quaint room where someone’s grandmother had once wintered her ferns. From there they ascend a narrow back stairs with a satin rope as the railing. It is the kind of deep maroon satin rope churches use to mark pews for the family during funeral services.

 

The house is now for sale. Her public rooms are large. The foyer flanked by the front stairs was meant, I am sure, as some sort of gathering room. The living room to the left used to have pocket doors. They are gone which makes me angry until I spy the French doors leading to a stone terrace. I move quickly to remove the chairs blocking the doors, struggle with the locks and voilà, the doors open. However, the storm doors have been painted shut, locks and all, so I must satisfy myself with the light alone, a partial epiphany. I know the breeze in the trees, the smell of fall leaves, the sound of the nearby fountain all would flood this stale room with life and energy.

 

From the living room one enters the dining room where, I am told, the long table was left by an earlier owner all those years ago. In one corner of the room is a fireplace. Its mantle has an oval mirror with two small stands protruding to hold, I assume, candles. I am wrong. They are cake stands perched high connected to the mantle. I imagine cakes on the stands at Sunday dinner. A banana cream and a coconut cake. You could have your pick but you must finish your vegetables.

 

A staircase begins outside the dining room. The staircase is refined with alternating spindles of varied designs. As you climb the stairs a bank of stained glass windows face you. Each panel has a crank. They were meant to be opened as were the casement windows in the side sleeping porch at the end of the back hall on the second floor. My friend, Sena, lives next door and the porch from her study is eye to eye with this porch.

 

Later in the day she gleefully says I must buy this house. We could talk on summer nights between our porches as though we’d each climbed the huge old cotton wood between us. We’d pretend we were girls again and talk about our houses.

 

My fantasy continues as I walk down the hall toward the very front of the second floor, into the largest of the two bedrooms. As soon as I enter that room I feel the light. The house faces east so this room on this bright autumn morning is filled with the slanted light of early November. In the sitting area I notice on large window. It opens onto a small balcony which hovers over the front porch. The floor is made of stone with flag poles on either side.

 

I know then that each morning, weather permitting, I’d walk out my bedroom window and sit on my stone porch to watch the sun rise in the east or in the night wait for the stars and the mood to climb over the old trees, high enough for me to see and know it was time to retreat to bed and reading and sleep all the way until sunrise.

 

Then both Sena and I would live in magical houses with huge rooms and hidden passages. Sena says, “You’d breathe such life into that house. It needs you so.” And she is right. David would get those French windows open and together we’d bid the evening goodnight. Then we would walk back through, close the open windows and fall into the magic of this old house on the eve of our old age. And the young tenants could stay.

Photographs by Ad Cat Media. See more photographs at Autumn On the Court.

The Power to Overcome Loss

David and I moved into this wonderful old home on

Belgravia Court

at this time of year in 1994. I’ve resurrected a story I wrote about that time in honor of the anniversary. And in honor of another fine old home – Linden Hill.

 

I always thought that when I grew up, saying good-bye would get easier.  That somehow becoming an adult would imbue me the power to overcome loss.  For most, youth is the time of invincibility.  For me, it was just the opposite; I believed I’d become invincible with age.

Well, it hasn’t happened.  I’m still not very good at saying good-bye.  I’ve decided it’s an ongoing process.  I’ll spend the rest of my life saying good-bye, a moment at a time, to the places and people I’ve loved and left.  Because the truth is, love never leaves us.  We become what we love, assimilate what matters most to us--the people, places, foods, smells, touch, presence.

The time has come to say good-bye to Linden Hill.  On Monday, we close on our new house and begin our move from these wonderful rooms we’ve called home for the past year.  It’s been a place of comfort and healing.

I’ll never stop saying good-bye to these quiet spaces, the tall ceilings and large windows, the wide planks of pine and everywhere, the books.

I’ll never stop comparing fireplaces to the ones I’ve known here or awake in a lovelier room than the one I’ve known here.

This weekend Kate brought home some friends from school.  At two a. m. everyone became hungry and I cooked with them down in the kitchen.  Our kitchen doors were once windows and to open them you must push out and the large panes of glass give way to the out of doors.

It was stuffy inside and I opened the doors and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air.  I was astonished by the beauty of the night, the ripple of clouds just beneath the nearly full moon, the crickets and the stars.

It’s a little after 3 a.m. now.  The kids have all settled down.  The house is quiet.  The same night has gathered our new house where new windows await us.  It’s time now to say good-bye, to pack up my memories and move on.  It’s never easy to say good-bye.  Yet, life wouldn’t be nearly so rapturous if we never changed because we’d never grow. A layer at a time, I’m moving deeper and deeper into love.

Mid-summer's Recollections of Home

All in a moment the evening sky went dark. Thunder terrified our dog, Missouri, and lightning glared over all of us. The rain took its time. Then, just as suddenly as the sky had gone dark, the rain flooded gutters, rushed through trees and pebbled the rooftops.

Sunday night in the city where the gaslights flicker even as we stuff certain window sills with towels to keep the water from seeping into the plaster walls below.

Upon waking this morning, the air is still and heavy. Today’s high is 96 degrees. It is, after all, summer.  It’s supposed to be hot and muggy. I take comfort in that.

In my childhood there was no air conditioning.  My mother rose before dawn to iron.  I wore shorts and halters. My favorite halter top had fluted straps that rose over my child’s shoulders and they made me feel pretty.

In those days we practiced our most difficult spelling words out loud as we took turns swinging on the neighborhood’s single swing set. D-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-c-e…..we were eight years old and we pumped our legs hard so we could swing high. E-l-o-q-u-e-n-c-e….

Our blind neighbor, Mrs. Pebbles, had a Seeing Eye dog who was allowed outside from time to time. He’d show up with a mouth filled with rocks which he would deposit at your feet with a look of keen expectation. You’d stop swinging long enough to scoop up one wet rock and throw it as far as you could, knowing he’d be back soon drooling the same rock.  We’d do this over and over, chanting spelling words and swinging in the hot days of summer.

Mrs. Pebbles had a music box that she would let me carefully lift the lid and watch the pop-up ballerina pirouette before a tiny mirror.  I opened and shut the lid over and over until I sensed it might be polite to say thank you and leave.

When we weren’t swimming or climbing on the swing set, we were running. We had imaginary wars, battles over what I can’t quite recall. Sometimes we played “Gunsmoke.” My best friend, Diane, always got to be “Miss Kitty” because Diane had a mole on her face and so did Miss Kitty. Diane called it her beauty mark and my mother assured me I was pretty enough without a mole on my face.

Up the way was a farmhouse where Virginia, Diane’s housekeeper, lived with her daughter Francis Arlene. Frances Arlene was a lot older than we were but we knew Virginia wanted more children. She told us about her “miscarriages.” She never mentioned a man which of course, at eight, made perfect sense to us.

Diane’s grandfather owned the farm and the house and the barns.  Out front of the house there were tall pear trees that sent down the sweetest fruit. You had to be careful of wasps, but the pears were worth it.

There was a large field near the barns and a horse named “Gypsy.” We had to get a step ladder out of the shed in order to mount her but once on her shiny black back, we would hold onto her mane as she walked around the circumference of the field. I would lay my face against her and if my head hurt as it sometimes did when I was a child, the pain would leave when I rode Gypsy. Up there high above the earth, I could feel the easy sway of her muscles beneath me as she ambled around that summer field.

Way off in the distance, beyond roads I was forbidden to cross, stood a tall brick house facing a road that no longer existed. If it had been up to me, Gypsy and I would have thundered right over those forbidden roads to that old house. I loved that old house. I would never have the chance to enter it before it was gone, but the love I felt was real and I have carried it into every old house I’ve entered since.

When it rained, we played in Diane’s playhouse which was stored in her daddy’s garage. He was never home. Diane lived with her grandparents next door.  Diane was allowed to see her mother once a year, but that’s another story.

It’s summer and if we slow way, way down, the living feels easy.

(Picture above is an abandoned home in Bourbon County, KY. Photograph by Deborah Stewart)

 

 

 

Flickering Candles

   

 And so we talk, deep into the evening on our small back deck, with candles flickering in their glass baskets. It is May, the month of our marriage and in a few days we will celebrate our 36 years together as man and wife, father and mother, Granddaddy and Amma.

 We share a bottle of chilled white wine. The evening is perfect, no air conditioner compressor, no mosquitoes, just the cool presence of early spring with the night birds calling to one another and the occasional siren in the distance to remind us of the city in which we now live.

     Together we have buried parents, witnessed births, faced difficult financial times, weathered illness, celebrated graduations and marriages. Sometimes, I confide, I wake in the middle of the night in a panic certain of the tasks that lay before me: waking Kate early so she can review for a test, reminding David to practice piano for his evening recital, fold the clothes still in the dryer, schedule dental appointments, shop for the week (Mom, there’s never anything to eat in this house…i.e. no chips, dips, soft drinks or sweets of all kinds etc). Then I open my eyes to the renewed awareness that Kate is now married, in her own home with her husband, Craig, and if she needs to get up early she sees to that.

 David is probably cradling his sleepy son who sometimes wakes in the night for a drink or to snuggle between David and his wife, Karen. At two, Dave the 4^th aka Baby D, states solemnly that it’s mommy’s bed, not daddy’s bed, proving once more that the Oedipal complex is alive and well among the two year olds of the world.

“If we were at the farm,” my husband says, “We’d be listening to the whippoorwills and the owls.”

“If we were in Paris," I say, "we'd be out walking until dawn, maybe stopping in at that tiny jazz bar just down the street from our room. Remember?"

“If we were in Monterey," he says, "we'd be walking the beach, listening to the rush of the sea and the snores of the seals."

“If we were there,” I say, “we’d have just finished dinner in that Greek restaurant which was, do you recall, smothered in fog that night. It was like walking in a dream.”

“If we were there,” he says, “I’d build you a fire in our bedroom fireplace and it would burn all through the night.”

“Yes,” I reply. “That was when I was afraid of the dark.”

“But,” he reminds me, taking a sip of his wine, “you’re not afraid anymore.”

“No.” I raise my glass to a toast. “You’ve been strong and kept me safe for a long time now. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“We’ve been strong together,” he says.

On our actual anniversary, we would celebrate with dinner at Lilly’s where the food and wine were exquisite. But, it’s that brief moment in the candlelit darkness of our back deck that held for me the true celebration of our marriage.

Cheers!