This old house
Byrne, Katharine
THIS OLD HOUSE Katharine Byrne The yard when we moved here was a tangle of phlox and ferns, a garden reluctantly abandoned by the old woman who lived here before us. Like neighbors who turn up...
...Many mothers are working elsewhere, contributing to the support of the mortgage...
...Most families move on after a few years, but the houses remain, unless a shrewd investor has another idea...
...I want Jack to see the little world where his grandmother and her brothers and sisters played-but we don't see any children...
...We pause at a house where radical renovation is being finished off with paint in three fashionable colors...
...While they're at work," she explains, "Gretchen needs a couple of walks, and so do I. I'd feel foolish walking around by myself...
...What took you so long...
...Her favorite Kilmer poem was about an abandoned house, "The saddest sight when it's left alone that ever your eyes could meet...
...Jack and I had a lot to look at and much to think about...
...As we pass beneath the maples that shade the sidewalk, I recall from an ancient past, "a tree that looks at God all day / And lifts her leafy arms to pray...
...After my heart attack," he says, "I got Jerry from the Anti-Cruelty Society...
...she wants to know as we head for home...
...Out go the Madeira napkins and the linen table cloth, leaving room for her socks and sweatshirts in that drawer...
...A journey like this takes time...
...Competently, she takes charge, grabs her child, and secures him in the stroller...
...How glad I am to look up and see his mother, who has come to look for us...
...Like neighbors who turn up blinking in the sun after a winter indoors, the descendants of these perennials reappear each spring...
...Without the long dining room table, there's room for a bed...
...But soon Jack wakes up, eager for action...
...I should introduce him to Elsie, who borrows a dog from the couple who live beside her...
...Then they are declared "teardowns," replaced by something bigger and presumed to be better...
...That's the prevailing impulse, even though there seem to be fewer people...
...I suggest, assuring Anne that we will return safe and soon...
...Walking should be a companionable activity," I observe to Jack...
...Your great-grandfather made it, and it could hold six children...
...More room, Jack...
...As soon as the moving vans roll down the street, here come the transforming architects, the floor sanders, carpenters, decorators as another family prepares to put the stamp of affluence on an old address...
...Tommy used to play in our sandbox...
...Today, you could not apply Kilmer's personifications, ascribing affection, chagrin, or disappointment, to an empty house...
...Geraldine was my wife's name, but I know she wouldn't mind...
...Why don't I take him for a walk...
...Relieved, I hold onto her arm...
...Consider the woman who can no longer reach her bedroom...
...Sister Mary Charles Borromeo loved Joyce Kilmer, a poet twice-blessed among us fifth graders: not only a war hero (World War I, that is) but a Catholic...
...I push the empty stroller ahead of me, trying to catch up...
...Adjustments are discussed and implemented...
...In spite of the hesitancy of her response, we embark, Jack belted into his stroller and I gripping the handle and listing slightly...
...No word from Jack, but a happy holler...
...Jack tolerates the baby swings for a few minutes but has other things in mind, involving curving slides, a wavy walkway five feet off the ground, a drinking fountain to splash in...
...For we have come to the little park, alive with children...
...Where she used to make the climb from the basement, carrying a laundry basket, now she finds the ascent daunting...
...Those deemed old enough are off to nursery school or play group...
...or they are in the house blinking at their caretakers' soap operas...
...I try to explain...
...I thought so, too, when I was ten...
...Today my grandchild Anne is in the garden at ease, a rare treat for a mother of an athletic two-year-old...
...When Tommy Cronin lived here about forty years ago," I tell Jack, "the stucco was shabby gray...
...These old people should be walking together, airing their dogs, and recalling old times...
...As I consider all the additions being made, I see no evidence of subtraction...
...The place would not even have time to breathe a sigh of relief at the end of one family's tenure...
...Here comes an old settler like myself, the man for whom a dog was just prescribed as physical therapy...
...Yet quietly, behind an unchanging facade, this kind of change goes on as well...
...Around the corner, an old bungalow is having its roof lifted, with a floor of bedrooms and baths added...
...Jack has no comment...
...This is a busy place designed by specialists, filled with adventurous possibilities...
...I try to interest him in a little garden that replicates the wild flowers and prairie grasses that stood here a hundred years ago, but he sees a higher slide and takes off...
...The man hurries on, explaining, "I have to maintain a good speed for this to do me any good...
...Jack may not respond to questions about housing trends, but he knows a playground when he sees one, and bounces in his seat, anxious to get out, a possibility I had not considered when we left home...
...think about...
...For her, Jack," I insist, "that's a home improvement...
Vol. 130 • June 2003 • No. 11
