The First Hundred Years

Our friends and neighbors, Winifred and Adam, live in the house where my dad grew up, the house his grandparents built in 1912, the house where Scott and I lived for several years.  The house turned a hundred years old this year and Winifred had the splendid and generous idea of hosting a party to honor the house and its memories.  We were honored to be invited and looked forward with relish to such a unique and heartwarming celebration.  Winifred does everything with class, with subdued grace and dignity, easy elegance.  When we descended on her home, each detail was in order and each corner was beautiful.  Walking through the house brought back floods of forgotten memories, some from my childhood, some from when our kids were very little.  We moved in as newlyweds, brought Golda home from the hospital there.  Freestone was five months old when we moved out, Golda was six years.

Hopefully without compromising Winifred and Adam's privacy too much, I'll share some memories...

By the way, my grandmother's name was Golda, and we called her Big Golda after Little Golda was born.  My grandfather's name was William Harvey King and we called him Bill.  Now we call my dad Bill in his honor.

This is the center of the home, the central hallway.  When the house was built, the one bathroom didn't have a toilet.  It was a big deal when the town's first indoor toilet was installed right here in this bathroom.  It also had a clawfoot tub where I spent hours up to my eyebrows in bubbles.  I can still remember the metallic smell of the water mixed with Avon bubble bath.

This kitchen is gorgeous now.  I remember it when light would stream in through the windows to illuminate a scene of Golda cooking dollar pancakes, grilled cheese sandwiches or a pot of porridge.  (Quaker oatmeal.)  When I was in college, I tried to get my Quaker oats to be just like Golda's, to comfort me whenever I was sad.  The secret is salt.  And lots of brown sugar, Half & Half and buttery toast.  This is also where I served Scott one of his first "meals" as a domestic wife.  It was a bowl of granola.  As he was eating it, I noticed that it had ants swimming in it.  Lots of ants.  I casually took the bowl and offered to "make" something else.  Cheerios, perhaps?

Winifred is an exceptional gardener.  The yard looks lovely down to the last detail.  When I was young, the acre-and-a-half yard was a wonderland of trees, bushes and winding paths.  We children explored it so thoroughly that each section had a life of its own.  There was the grove that held a secret path to the south lawn if you spent some time finding it.  There was the garden trellis that looked like a big spider, the enormous yellow rose bush.  Of course, there was the tall, tall pine tree that I often climbed way too high.  I can feel the sticky sap on my hands, the bark of the tree sticking to it in chunks.  There was a rose garden where I planted the rose Sarah S. gave me when my grandpa died.  I knew where each tulip would poke through in the spring, where to find the hidden Lilies of the Valley and which ground cover to reach under to find the spigot for the hose, where I could get an ice-cold drink in the summertime.  And in the wintertime, there were two excellent hills for sledding and a big open space for Duck Duck Goose.

This is some of the molding in the kitchen.  Somebody scratched the words "Felshaw King" into the wood.  Judging by the handwriting, this was before 1951, when Felshaw perfected his cursive in the 9th grade.  I'd say this signature is circa 1944.

Hi Jim!  This fireplace is the image my mind conjures up when I think "Christmas."  We used to throw big wads of wrapping paper into the fire and watch them flare way up.  Sometimes there was a real fear that we had gone too far, until the blaze retreated back into the safe confines of the fireplace and the smoke went up the chimney.  Scott and I hosted a Winter Solstice party around this fireplace for several years.  We have pictures of our friends singing carols right here, before any of us had kids and when all of us still had hair.

Felshaw wasn't the only naughty King child to live in the home.  Our Golda also carved her name into the gorgeous wood.  And then, so it would be more visible, she rubbed diaper ointment into the grooves.  I bet Adam and Winifred are glad she did that for them to enjoy!  Golda is embarrassed that she got some of the letters backwards.  Serves her right!

These are the steps to the basement that Big Golda always cautioned me NOT to go down.  They are treacherous!  Dad said Big Golda would slip down them about once a year and Bill would get mad at her carelessness, probably out of concern.  They never wanted any of us to get hurt. 

I had never seen this wallpaper, uncovered in the West room where Ari's nursery used to be when she was a baby.  Before we had Ari and after I had had a miscarriage, when I was already longing to adopt, I would walk into this room and look around at its emptiness.  I would think, "We have room.  And children need homes!"  I wanted to fill that room.  I'm glad that room is inhabited now, by a very sweet and precious boy, and I'm glad all the rooms in my house are filled, too.

The North room was a storage room when I was a kid, with a big bed in the middle and a bare lightbulb suspended over the bed.  My brothers slept here on special occasions, under so many blankets they couldn't move their legs.  I thought they were brave to sleep there; it was scary to me.  Later it was Ruby's darling room for a time, decorated in yellow and blue, with blue walls and clouds in the closet.  Now Ruby's little violin student Nancy lives here.  How lucky we are to be friends with Nancy, and to visit her room!  Thank you, Nancy!

This is where Bill and Golda usually put the Christmas tree.  I have pictures of me in front of it as a baby, Big Golda in front of it in a polyester pantsuit, me in front of it as a teenager with braces and a side ponytail...this corner has seen many Christmas trees and many fashions come and go!

Winifred's decorating taste is impeccable, and so in keeping with the home's personality.

When I was growing up, this was the TV room.  That closet right there was mysterious, and went way back under the stairs, where there could have been monsters!  Usually, there were just raincoats and extra hangers, though.  The TV didn't have a remote, but my grandfather didn't let that stop him from changing the channel or the volume on a whim.  "Circe, turn it up a tad.  Circe, turn it to five.  Circe, turn it down a tad.  Circe, let's see what's on 2."  With each command, I would scramble over to the TV and turn the knob.  I always tried to finagle an invitation to sleep over on Saturday nights because that's when Love Boat and Fantasy Island were on.  (Back then, kids, people had to watch TV shows at a certain time.  There was no way to record them.  And there were only five channels.  Six when we got Channel 13.  And programming would stop after the Tonight Show.  There was just a rainbow of vertical lines from midnight until six in the morning.) Unfathomable!

I loved Fantasy Island, but try as I might, I sometimes fell asleep before the characters' fantasies were fulfilled.  When that happened, Bill and Golda would let me snooze while they watched Channel Five News and then carry me up these stairs to bed.  My grandpa's room was the West room and Big Golda's room was the South room.  That's where I slept too, in the huge California King bed with a thousand blankets on top of me because the house didn't have heat upstairs.  Too many nights to count, I drifted off to sleep with Golda's pocket clock ticking loudly and Golda herself kneeling by the side of the bed, murmuring her endless prayers, night cap perched on her head, her brow knit with concern for one of her sisters or children or friends.

 This dining room has been the site of many holiday meals and Sunday dinners.  Winifred is an extraordinary cook, so I'm sure the tradition continues.  Golda, in the style of the "good old days," cooked roasts on Sunday with heaping piles of mashed potatoes and gravy, her own bottled mustard pickles on the side.  My mouth is watering.  My eyes are watering!  Those meals are over and gone.  I wish I could sit down to Thanksgiving 1980 here...just long enough to see Bill carve the turkey with the knife I can picture so well.  To observe Trajan build the reservoir and lake for his gravy, with the connecting river.  To dish up some orange jello with walnuts, mandarin oranges and apples and top it with freshly whipped cream.  To pour Coca Cola into a tall, red glass with ice from a metal tray.  To feel the safe warmth of a happy childhood and to say thank you to my grandparents.

It's too late for all of that.  But I can still say thanks to Winifred and Adam for inviting us over and for allowing us to conjure up the memories of a beautiful past and add one more happy memory in an unfolding future.  Thank you!  We are so fortunate you're here!