Talking Houses

If the walls could speak, what stories they could tell. Old houses would have many tales of lives begun and ended within their rooms. Family battles. A drunken aunt, a sickly father, money coming in and going out. Old houses remember the irresistible smell of roast chicken, the horrible stink of burnt lima beans. The time the roof leaked, the time the snow beat on the window panes and the furnace roared to keep everyone warm and safe inside.

New houses? Well, you have to start somewhere. But I don’t think gypsum board can tell as good a story as the plaster some tired man mixed with a trowel. Plywood floors do not remember the sounds of your heels as well as real oak or pine. Real wood never dies, it becomes more beautiful as it ages. And those efficient, new plastic windows that never warp or shrink certainly keep out the drafts and mosquitoes and the sound of traffic a few blocks over. Keep out the smells of the neighbor’s barbeque and the sounds of a wailing baby, too.

Old trees guard old houses, tall, leafy shade in the summer and bare branches in winter to catch the stars. New houses have to wait years for this sweet embrace. Old houses may once have looked alike in a builder row but they have grown wings and ells and second stories and character. Old houses have old gardens where tomatoes grow every summer and all the birds for miles around know the birdbath will be fresh every morning. Old houses’ doors may not close tightly and they don’t have garages in front but they do have porches to sit on so you can wave to the folks pushing baby carriages along the sidewalks.

If you live in an old house, that is, a house that’s older than you are, take a moment to listen to the creak of the radiator, the squeak of a certain floorboard, the sounds of water running through the pipes. You may hear the footsteps of those who came before you. Where did they go? Where do any of us go when we move on?

Our houses remember us and hold the sound of our footsteps through all the years ahead.