Eclipse Day at Our House

I woke up here in Nyel’s hospital room in Portland thinking, “It’s a big day for our house!  I hope things go well and it does itself proud.”  Today, the long-awaited “Celebration of Poetry” is happening there –without us in residence for reasons beyond our control (as they say.)  I’m so sorry to miss the event but gloriously pleased that our neighbors and friends feel comfortable carrying on in our absence.  And, somehow, I feel that the house is delighted, as well.

Built in 1869 by Tom Crellin, the house has been in our family since 1901 – long enough that it seems like a family member in its own right.  I almost feel as though the walls do talk, so familiar am I with the stories of things that have occurred in its rooms and on its porches and in its garden.  Not just the special events – like in 1910 when Uncle Cecil and RuthieD were married at one-minute past midnight in the parlor (for a complicated reason to do with the timing of the tides.)

But also, the scary things like when the chimney in the original kitchen caught fire in 1913-ish and my grandmother (sensibly to my way of thinking) had the space reconfigured into a library.  And there was the time, a year or so later, that she was in the ‘new’ kitchen and she heard a strange noise in the dining room.  It seems that one of the pigs had found its way into the house and was happily scratching its back on the underside of the dining room table.  Or how about my own almost eighty-year-old memory of sharing the clawfoot bathtub with Jimmy and Kay, family friends from California when we were about two, three, and four years old – bubbles and water everywhere!

More recently, of course, the calendar has been filled with croquet tournaments and weddings in the garden, house concerts and Christmas parties indoors.  And, that’s to say nothing of all the meals with friends and family around the dining room table and the Friday night get-togethers in the library – all the fun things that the house has opened its doors for since 1999 when it became our turn to play host and hostess.

These days, I think more and more often about the house’s future – when Charlie and Marta will have charge of things.   Will one of them live here full time?  Will the house still serve as a gathering place for special events?  Will the walls be silently quoting poetry and will the floors be echoing the tapping of toes at our many house concerts – and saying, “Let’s do more!”  Oh, how I hope so!  Continuing as an Oysterville gathering place is my fondest wish for this 148-year-old family member!