DEAR HOUSE

Dear House,

I agreed to live in you on a whim and a little faith. I remember receiving three blurry photographs from a dear friend who had done the hard work of touring homes in the area. As I rolled down the highway in the passenger seat of my friend L’s car, I texted, “I’m in.” (Or something to that effect.) Yes to moving across the country. Yes to moving from the pacific northwest to our nation’s capital. Yes to my first home that was not a dorm. The distance between a verbal commitment and a lease closed the deal between a dream and fear. I must have laughed nervously and just like that committed to one of the greatest love stories that the next five years would hold. 

I’ll admit that our first encounter was perhaps not all that it was cracked up to be. I arrived from the airport a wee bit early. None of the other roommates were home. Imagine my horror at seeing caution tape barring the entrance to the porch of the address I was (quite?) sure was mine in the waning light. Just like that Clara popped up and together we hauled my giant suitcases up the backstairs that can only be described as what I imagine Harry Potter to have lived in before things really looked up for him. The caution tape, it turned out, was because of fresh paint, not a crime scene.

Once inside, I walked into the wrong room. The other one, the one across from the front door was actually mine. I would share that room for the next few months before making it entirely mine. Two young women in one tiny room completely broke with their entire lives in front of them. Oh my, we had such little furniture that first year. Do you remember? What we did have was mostly gifted.

We furnished you with that big old blue couch we were gifted when The Castle on St. Andrew’s disbanded after the election. M gifted us the big beautiful table that still graces what we consider the living room. And - after coming over for dinner - the B family drove over a beautiful red carpet that we still call ours. T gave us this old white desk. It was broken then (it’s still broken now) and we loaded it with our art supplies, what few tools we had, extra school supplies and things we just otherwise didn’t have uses for. A kitchen table that wobbled, a few chipped dishes from D, and two crooked bookshelves accounted for the rest of our furniture. One Ikea run later, it looked a little more like home. 

I spent most of that year on the road and, for one select portion, only slept in my bed for six days...non consecutively. I remember sitting up in bed and forcing H to help me put some art on your walls - all old postcards and such in anticipation of a friend’s arrival.

My goodness you gave us a run for our money those first few years. Those early months held a series of hilarious repairs and accidents. The painting of porches and hallways was almost constant. There was a leak in the upstairs which kept a hilarious trio of workmen - who were deeply committed to giving us dating advice and laughing at our antics - in and out of our flat for months. They must have cut holes in every ceiling in the flat in an attempt to ensure that that wretched leak didn’t return again.

You were not home only to us though; you also hosted a stunning array of mice, squirrels, and - not to be forgotten - racoons who returned not one, not two, but three times, even giving some of their offspring their first few days here. My goodness most of the time we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Truthfully we did both.

Our human neighbours have always been a source of fascination too. There were the first dear ones who worked in politics and gifted us all sorts of furniture when they moved out. There was the family from New York who brought their littlest one here to her first home while her older brother practiced his sprints right before (our) bedtime. There was the Spanish chemist and her food importer husband. The folks who managed the cheesecake shop. The environmentalist, the teacher, and cardiac nurse, and now two psychotherapists as well that have called your walls home. 

For the first 16 months, I was so terrified to furnish you. What if you were only temporary? Today, it gives me so much joy to see the sprawl of things not arranged in such a way so as to be packed up easily. 

Over the years, we’ve filled you out. We now have properly framed photographs, end tables, gorgeous gifted dishes, lamps, proper beds, desks, and tables that don’t wobble. Wine glasses and proper pans too. We even have air conditioners and curtains. We’ve hung paintings, filled bookshelves, and even furnished porches. Armchairs - once thought a luxury - grace corners of our living room. We have a new couch as well, hauled over the stairs through veils of giggles and the groaning of the good natured neighbour. 

We called you the Cottage and in total, there have been 11 women who have called our flat alone home. And what a home it has been. But I’ve been describing mostly how you look and not the things you’ve born witness to. You have not just been a house. You have been a home. 

I believe in the theology of space and the way in which walls and windows can bear witness to the most sacred things. You have done that. You took your charges, young women with their whole lives ahead of them, and gave them the space to dream and to fail as well. 

Over the years you have borne witness to countless Thanksgiving and Easter dinners. Do you remember how we would put our two tables together in your living room and cram a minimum of 12 around for hours on end. Do you remember the Tuesday evenings when D would come over to do his laundry and inevitably stay for dinner? Do you remember that Thanksgiving when we forced D to sit next to our friend E - who would later also call you home - just to see if they might fall in love. (They did and we’re ever so glad.) Do you remember when D sat in her mostly empty back room painting the gorgeous painting that now hangs in our living room as a way to say goodbye?

Do you remember us sneaking up our first Christmas tree over the back stairs? Do you remember first kisses snuck on the porch and the fire-alarms set off by cooking adventures gone array? Do you remember the tears - so many of them - as we fought for our dreams and our healing too? Do you remember the sacred moments of jobs quit, applications submitted, therapy both given and received? Do you remember the saying yes to marriage and to moving too? Do you remember the ending of things? Jobs, friendships, and the seeing of ourselves as small? Do you remember the safety extended to so many who slept on couches, in sleeping bags, on hauled-out-mattresses, who pilgrimage here before or just after undertaking great adventures and brave new steps?

Do you remember the early morning Ubers rolling up to take one or the other of us to the airport? Do you remember the giant parties we would hold into the wee hours of the morning? 45 people or so crammed into your walls, shoes piled so high outside the door that they had to be moved to the second landing as well? Do you remember the honest words of faith and failure spoken here too? Do you remember bearing witness to dinners held for any and every occasion? You taught us how to celebrate often and well. And celebrate we did. 

We’re just making our way through the worst of a global pandemic and I - the one inhabitant of this house who has quite possibly been the worst at sitting still and appreciating who you are - have not left you for a single night for almost six months. Your walls, which I feared might feel oppressive have seemed, instead, expansive. I’ve never loved our high ceilings and front porch more. I love the way you capture the evening light, the way that your kitchen is still the center of our lives, and the way in which our doors remain open almost every night through the summer months. 

But perhaps, most of all, I want to say thank you. Thank you for being my first home. Thank you for bearing witness to my healing. Thank you for midwifing my courage. Thank you for helping me discover within myself a sense of coming home. The truth is you took a tiny twenty-two year old and, over the years, brought her home not only to this space but to who she was and who she is still to become. 

Love,

Hannahle