June 20, 2016 | We removed twenty layers of wallpaper - like archaeologists sifting their way through the strata of life.
Thirty years ago, in May of 1986, my fiancé and I had been coming home from college every weekend to work on an old house on his parents' property. In exchange for our remodeling efforts, we could live there rent free after our marriage. It was hard work, but worth the effort. I mean, free rent? Come on.
It was an interesting home. It was the home where my fiancé's parents began their marriage. They paid 800 dollars for it in 1945. I'm not sure of the official architectural term for the house, but we always called it the basement house. I had seen a few of them in my childhood, but they were always flat-roofed. This one was different. It had a second story and a gabled roof. This gave it a strange appearance, like a regular house that had sunk halfway into the ground. My fiancé's sister called it the house that sat down.
We spent the first 18 months of our married life in that house. Our first child was born eight weeks before we moved out to continue our education at another university. In those 18 months we removed twenty layers of wallpaper - like archaeologists sifting their way through the strata of life. We painted. We pulled up linoleum. We carpeted. We plumbed. We re-glazed window panes. We scrubbed. We cleaned. We furnished. We caulked and sealed and weather-stripped. We plastered and textured. We killed spiders. And earwigs. And ants. We hung blinds and curtains. It seems like yesterday.
But it wasn't yesterday. It was thirty years ago. This weekend, we joined my husband's family to prepare this same home for demolition. We removed windows and doors. We stripped the cabinets of hardware. We removed light fixtures and appliances and water heaters. We pulled up carpet. We stripped it bare.
The local fire department showed up for training exercises. In full gear, they climbed the steep gabled roof and practiced cutting ventilation holes. They worked hard in the summer heat. Then they climbed down and tossed their cookies. Poor guys. They'll keep training until it's time to torch the place, and then they'll train some more - in real time instead of the hypothetical scenarios dreamt up by their superiors. It turns out a steep gabled roof, close to the ground, is a gold mine for training fledgling firefighters.
It would be a lie of omission if I didn't admit that reminiscing about my newlywed home of 30 years doesn't make me feel old. Because it does. Ancient, in fact. Like one of those layers of history unearthed by those aforementioned archaeologists. Yet, those 30 years have included more happiness and joy, more despair and grief, more learning and bonding than I'd ever imagined possible as a 21-year-old bride. It turns out, the old house was a gold mine for training fledgling spouses, too.
Even though the house will cease to exist, the memories we captured there will forever exist, and the experiences had, and the lessons learned, won't be forgotten either. It served as a solid foundation for our marriage. Here's to thirty more years, Honey! The house may go up in smoke, but we're still going strong. I love you to the moon and back. To infinity and beyond. Eternally yours, I'll always be.
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