Buried Treasure

Jake and I purchased our first home this year. No one has been able to give us a firm date for the actual building of this house, but we know that the neighborhood went up circa 1920, so it's entirely likely that the home is 90 years old. Sometimes when I'm cleaning the old woodwork, or listening to the creak of the floorboards, it seems like I'm looking at or listening to a dear old woman, all bright eyes and wrinkles with a thin, seasoned voice. I love that. There are few things I treasure more than relationships with older, wiser women, and I feel like my relationship to this house is turning into that. As I wash windows upstairs, I wonder if any babies were born here. When I polish the stair rail, I imagine a graceful young woman floating down the stairs to greet her beau at the door. I hear children giggling and playing in the back yard and Roaring Twenties music playing on a record player in the living room. I see a dressed-up gentleman coming home through the front door, greeted by a skirted and pearl-wearing wife's call from the kitchen... but I won't make you endure any more of my imaginings, because this post is to inform you of an actual discovery this dear old house let me find. You can ask Jake, I was so excited you would have thought... I was having Ina May Gaskin over for dinner.

Before:

After: