Living In The House Of My Elders
For six years my husband and I lived in the house built by my grandparents in 1936, and in which they lived til the end of their lives. Now, after ten years away in the Pacific Northwest on the enchanted isle of Vashon, and one year in NE Oregon, we find ourselves once again living in la casita de mis abuelitos. We'll be here for a year or two until we've built our passive solar home on some farm land we've just purchased back on Vashon.
I know we bring many of our own romantic and idealized associations to any place, but living in this house is and always has been for me like living in the house of grace. My grandparents' lives reflected their values and thrifty nature and love of family and faith in God. My grandparent deliberately designed the house to have minimal storage, so that his emerging family wouldn't accumulate clutter (and this was back in the 30s!). Now, after our family of four has lived for the past year in an 800 sq ft house, and in the six months before that in a 26' diameter yurt, I find myself living in a spacious, well-designed, lovely home. And I feel it and the spirit of my grandparents (or my imagined sense of them) supports me in winnowing possessions that had been stashed in storage, and in finding a place for everything and everything in its place. I sweep the rooms and the back patio, and hang our washed clothes outside to dry--just as my grandmother always did (but I don't go so far as to iron anything!). I trim the lovely old roses and shrubs, and putter around the garden as mi abuelita did. But unlike my grandparents, I nibble on the rose petals, and on the cedar buds, and I have plans to harvest those hawthorn berries for medicine making. And I pass my time in awareness and thanksgiving and other core routines at the base of the enormous cedar just beyond the back patio.
A sense of "elder" is strong for me here--present everywhere: in the cedar, the old hedges, the roses, the lovely house, the cooler (a pantry that has a vent to allow cool air in to keep food items cool), the fold down ironing board, the basement that used to house "Mary Ann" -- the enormous furnace that always reminded me of Mike Mulligan's steam shovel after she'd made her home, so to speak, in the basement of the Town Hall she'd dug so fast and so well.
And mixed in with the old is the new. Windows we'd replaced with double panes, renewed landscaping in the front yard, lavender, and that apple tree I planted twelve years ago that is large and sturdy enough for my 7 year old daughter Gwynne to climb. My 14 year old daughter Amri keeps her miniature chickens and our duckling here. The dining room once only used for formal meals, is now primarily our computer and electronic music room. My harps reside where the TV used to be.
Three generations of my family have lived here. What a rare thing here in this part of America, in these times.
I know we bring many of our own romantic and idealized associations to any place, but living in this house is and always has been for me like living in the house of grace. My grandparents' lives reflected their values and thrifty nature and love of family and faith in God. My grandparent deliberately designed the house to have minimal storage, so that his emerging family wouldn't accumulate clutter (and this was back in the 30s!). Now, after our family of four has lived for the past year in an 800 sq ft house, and in the six months before that in a 26' diameter yurt, I find myself living in a spacious, well-designed, lovely home. And I feel it and the spirit of my grandparents (or my imagined sense of them) supports me in winnowing possessions that had been stashed in storage, and in finding a place for everything and everything in its place. I sweep the rooms and the back patio, and hang our washed clothes outside to dry--just as my grandmother always did (but I don't go so far as to iron anything!). I trim the lovely old roses and shrubs, and putter around the garden as mi abuelita did. But unlike my grandparents, I nibble on the rose petals, and on the cedar buds, and I have plans to harvest those hawthorn berries for medicine making. And I pass my time in awareness and thanksgiving and other core routines at the base of the enormous cedar just beyond the back patio.
A sense of "elder" is strong for me here--present everywhere: in the cedar, the old hedges, the roses, the lovely house, the cooler (a pantry that has a vent to allow cool air in to keep food items cool), the fold down ironing board, the basement that used to house "Mary Ann" -- the enormous furnace that always reminded me of Mike Mulligan's steam shovel after she'd made her home, so to speak, in the basement of the Town Hall she'd dug so fast and so well.
And mixed in with the old is the new. Windows we'd replaced with double panes, renewed landscaping in the front yard, lavender, and that apple tree I planted twelve years ago that is large and sturdy enough for my 7 year old daughter Gwynne to climb. My 14 year old daughter Amri keeps her miniature chickens and our duckling here. The dining room once only used for formal meals, is now primarily our computer and electronic music room. My harps reside where the TV used to be.
Three generations of my family have lived here. What a rare thing here in this part of America, in these times.
Tags: grandparents, simplicity
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jenn Wolfe on -
What a wonderful story! I think of my own grandparent’s place that was the only stable place for me as a child (my family moved a lot when I was little.) I find myself thinking of them and that place with much fondness and melancholy. Fondness because of all the good memories but melancholy because in the last years of my grandfathers' life he sold it for something smaller so I no longer have that place as a physical anchor point. It's kind of amazing to me how playing the role of Elder for several years has completely changed and deepened how I think about and relate to my parents and the memories of my grandparents. I think maybe we don't really "grow up" until we allow our parents and grandparents and even our ancestors to be held in our hearts as Elders. Perhaps the physical space where they live or have lived holds a lot of the spirit of what we're striving to perceive on this deep and profound journey to becoming better human beings. Food for thought! Thanks again.
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Permalink Reply by Jane Valencia on -
Jenn, you write:
"I think maybe we don't really "grow up" until we allow our parents and grandparents and even our ancestors to be held in our hearts as Elders. Perhaps the physical space where they live or have lived holds a lot of the spirit of what we're striving to perceive on this deep and profound journey to becoming better human beings."
This definitely is food for thought for me! And your words about your sense of melancholy regarding your grandfather selling his house that was such an anchor in your childhood, has me nodding, yes, yes, I've felt that too!. As a child and youth, my two favorite places were my two sets of grandparents' homes, and it was quite an upheaval for me when my paternal grandparents sold their home--such a fun, magical place for me that embodied the sense of being connected with scads of extended family and ancestors, being loved for exactly who I was, and with the beautiful wild landscape of western Colorado. It took me a long, LONG time for that regret and sadness over the house to leave me. Now, when I feel that connection I have with generations of family, a pioneer history, that desert-and-dinosaur landscape, it's the Colorado National Monument with its vista of the valley where my family had settled, that embodies the spirit of place, not that long-gone house at all. But even beyond that, is the sense that I carry within me that entered my heart when my paternal grandfather (and last of my grandparents) passed away: certain qualities that that he and the generations of that side of my family embody for me, and which continue in my own life. It was indeed a feeling of stepping into a new place and "maturity" in my life when I allowed those qualities and threads to be my own, held within me. Hmm!
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