Well, I know that chances are slim that you really have been talking or even thinking about Verlyn Klinkenborg of late, but I do highly recommend him.  Especially his book, the rural life.  And, in case you still don’t know who I’m talking about, check out my blog of May 26, 2020, “Characterizing Oysterville…Again!” for a quickie overview of both this amazing author and his book.

I’ve been re-reading bits of it, as I do periodically, and came across this sentence about the old farmhouse in upstate New York that the Klinkenborgs have been gradually restoring to its origins:  The house has changed us more than we’ve changed it.  What a lovely thought.  Right up there with “If these walls could talk.”

I do, indeed, believe that when we form a bond with a house there is a reciprocal relationship that occurs.  Somehow, we accommodate to one another.  Mr. K’s example is :  I almost never smack my head on the low ceiling over the stairs to the mudroom anymore.  For me that passage has grown taller over the past year.  Visitors smack their heads again and again, no matter ow often I warn them.

After-Performance Photo, 2017

I immediately thought of the time our friend Cameron missed the step going into our laundry room and fell to her knees on the (carpeted) uneven cement foundation, necessitating a hurried trip to the ER, stitches, and a slight delay to the Rose City Mixed Quartet’s performance at Vespers that afternoon.  So used to that one-step down were we, that I’d never given it a thought…  We certainly did think about it from then on!  And even more so now that Nyel is in a wheelchair.

But there are so many other, subtler ways the house and we have come to understand one another — the windows that won’t stay open unless propped; the door that opens by itself when the south wind blows (though Mrs. Crouch gets the blame); our automatic canting of a pen or pencil this way, not that way, lest it roll off the dining room table.  And, of course, which rooms we’ll be in according to the weather — never the front of the house if there’s a freezing east wind!

There are probably a dozen more subtle ways that we have changed — ways I haven’t even noticed.  A fair exchange, no doubt, for us re-painting, re-papering, and even re-purposing a room or two.  Maybe now that Mr. K. has set me to thinking, I’ll become more aware.  And maybe, someday, I’ll actually hear the walls talk!