Patina of Place

Some things, some places, some people get better with age

I see this front porch memory and hear the laughter of the creeks, the confluence just beyond the maple tree.

It remains to be seen what sheen and polish and comfort-ability we will find in the place we have arrived. It still feels like a time-share. Perhaps we will wear this home and hearth smooth also, in time, with our footsteps, our hand-holds, with the hundred quiet walks and constant memory-making. Time will tell if we will wear this place long enough for it to feel as natural as an old flannel shirt.

This fragment from a year ago, when we knew we would be grounded—or not—some other place in the winter of 2021: this place, it turns out.

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March 1, 2020 Journal from Goose Creek

I am both comfortable with the not-new-and-shiny and also prefer it. Maybe that is just a sign of my age. Long-loved things around me have co-evolved (or worn plum out) in sync with my own scuffing and abrasion and threadbearness through time.

Despite the love-hate relationship we have had with this old houses in the past, we willingly undertook the chance to save this one from “practice for the fire department” that the first contractor recommended in the spring of 1999. We gambled that it would come some day to fit to us like a favorite pair of slippers that we would wear long enough to conform to our frames–that we would grow, if not old, at least older-- in the embrace of these heart-pine walls.

Now our mortal chassis have successfully weathered the same two decades of wear that the house has endured since 1999, and I have to say the softwood seems to be holding up better than we have. To the edifice, we could add a coat of paint, a new heat pump and move the furniture where we wanted to suit our fancy. But in our own mortal frames, there is only so much repair, redecorating and painting that can be done.

We hope that the next occupants will share the same appreciation for the history of this house, this land, this neighborhood and larger community that we have come to know. The patina of constant occupancy can be a beautiful thing–in a home or on a familiar face and pair of well-used hands.

Our property-for-sale now is being offered to potential new owners via Circa who, by definition, seek out historical architecture where structure and story have grown older and richer, together.

Please share this with the right new owners, who will know when they see it that this is their future pair of comfortable slippers for their own aging-in-and-with-place.

Epilogue:

Turns out the very young new owners sent by chance or destiny to Goose Creek are very likely in two decades to know exactly what I’m talking about. And that is no small comfort to a pair of old duffers, looking back from this day, as those two souls are looking forward.