By Claire Blatchford
The house we live in was the first one I looked at 22 years ago when we realized we’d be moving from Connecticut to Massachusetts.
It was a rainy March day when we (the house and I) first met. As I went up the hill in the realtor’s car, I heard some odd clink-clank noises.
“What am I hearing?” I asked.
“Ice from the trees falling on the car roof,” Tom explained. “It can be raining in the valley and icing three or four miles up here.”
That the house was in a different weather-zone from where Ed and I were going to be working was our first introduction to it. And that, actually, remains key in my love for it. Not that it’s just in a different than usual weather-zone it’s in a newts-hawks--bobcats-wind-fog-sunrise, sunset and stars-zone I’d never never known before I came here.
Then—there it was—perched in the open like a doll house, the dirt drive ending abruptly some 40 yards from the front door. I got out thinking not so much about the house but the yard.
“LOTS of sun! Sun for the garden I’ve always wanted!”
The house is a Dutch Colonial, facing south, natural cherry and pine floors, 12 over 12 windows with sunny, wooden shelf space before them where indoor plants thrive in the cold months and seedlings can be started for the garden.
That the house had been designed by someone with a strong artistic temperament was evident. Houses, like land, trees, animals and people can convey deep contentment, the feeling of fulfillment that comes with being seen, heard, cared for.
“Tell me about the owner,” I asked Tom.
“She’s a bit of a carpenter.”
“You mean she built this herself?”
“I don’t think so, but she knew what she wanted.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rachel.”
When he saw it, Ed found the house way too small, though he too admired it and the location. We began looking at other houses on the market but, my mind stayed on the open sunny hill top. When Ed’s mind began returning to it too, Tom got us the phone number of the lady in the house next door and Ed called to ask how quickly the unpaved road was plowed in the winter.
“Excellent plowing,“ said Genie, who was also a teacher. Without pausing, she invited us to come by any time for coffee.
We still had our grown kids to think about.
“Only three or four rooms? Where would we sleep?” one daughter asked.
“A house on a dirt road?” the other daughter wondered.
But they loved it too when they saw it and if we sold our larger Connecticut house for the price we were asking we could add on a couple more rooms and another bath. Which is exactly what happened.
*
After our offer was accepted, the closing was set for the end of May, the same day a free-lancing van guy said he could move us from Connecticut to Massachusetts. But when we got to the house with Tom for the final inspection, we found a mess in the kitchen and a scribbled note from Rachel on the counter saying, “I can’t go through with this….”
Time stopped while Tom tried to reach Rachel’s realtor on his phone. The beautiful little house felt vulnerable, an open, wounded, heart. Yet I could see from the blooming geraniums and oxalis she’d left in the living room that Rachel and I were drawn to the same house plants. They called forth sympathy. “If this deal comes through, I’ll take care of you,” I promised.
Suddenly a car pulled up in the drive and Rachel’s realtor, Caroline, hurried inside.
“Is your lawyer going to meet you at the courthouse?” Caroline asked. dispensing with introductions.
We nodded.
“Go there, RiGHT NOW, all of you!” She gestured at the open front door. “I’ll clean this up…”
We were in one room in the court house, Rachel in another. We never met her face to face. For an hour our lawyers went back and forth. The deal was formalized. As we drove to our new home we caught up with the moving van chugging its way slowly up the steep hill.
Boy, that was close! Was all we could think. * In the busy-ness of moving I forgot about Rachel, but not for long. The neighbors who stopped to introduce themselves referred to her as That Woman. They told how she’d shouted at folks who parked on her grass (the property is beside a nature preserve where folks come to hike) were noisy or left trash. These neighbors had never been invited inside. One guy asked if he could take a look, saw the simple beauty and departed subdued.
When, by chance, I ran into Caroline some months later in town, bits and pieces of Rachel’s story emerged. Rachel had parted with the house because she had to move to Texas to care for her ailing mother. And Caroline had not only cleaned the house herself the day of the closing, she’d taken Rachel into her home for a month. Our offer was the third offer Rachel had received, the one Caroline wouldn’t let her back out of.
More bits and pieces emerged: Rachel was younger than us, was unmarried, knew how to make musical instruments, had a large dog, drove a truck. The house and the land spoke of her: there were the abandoned gardening tools around the yard, an unused pile of bricks, the cherry planks in the barn; all whispered of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. (Rachel told us indirectly, through her lawyer, to keep and use them.)
The row of trees by the road and behind the house were planted extremely close together. They shouted, “Keep your distance!” There were thick drops of candle wax on the mantelpiece in the living room telling of vigils and two small dark hand-made vases that were half-buried in the earth on either side of the front door. The necks of these vases were too tight to see inside but I had the feeling something was inside them. They were the only things Rachel had left that I didn’t want. It felt as though they contained something that stood in the way of her house being allowed to become our house.
Late that June I dug them up carefully, put them in a pail, got a shovel, and walked over a mile down the road. I found a spot in the woods, dug a hole, buried and blessed them.
The house felt better—more open and airy—when I got back. Years later when David Spangler described, quite literally, sweeping dark, lingering energies out of places, I thought, “Ah! That’s what I was doing!”
*
A couple of years went by.
One day while at the post office in town, the tall blonde postal clerk with the quiet smile and friendly eyes said, “I know your address well, the woman who built the house is my friend.”
“Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“How is she?”
“In Texas caring for her mother.”
“And your name is?”
“Ebba. I’ve been wanting for awhile to tell you your gardens are beautiful!”
“Thank you!”
“I’ve admired them from the road,” Ebba explained. “The addition you built is perfect!”
I was startled. Quite a few people have told us they admire our property and joked that they’re interested if we ever put it on the market, but Ebba’s compliments felt different.
“It is a beautiful house, “I said. “Please tell Rachel I thank her for it.”
“I will,” Ebba nodded. “And I hope you don’t mind… I’ve sent her photos I took from the road.”
I knew then that Rachel had found a way to keep an eye on her house even from Texas. Though I was, as I said, startled, I wasn’t upset or alarmed. I felt secure in our relationship with the property. Secure enough to be glad that the woman who had broken the ground and built the house still cared for it too. Even more—above and beyond that love Rachel and I shared for this place—was something I hadn’t actively acknowledged till then. It was this: as human beings we may financially “own” a place but, really, how silly it is to assume we are the sole owners of this place! The birds and other wild life that come and go—even the skunks that made their den beneath the garden shed for a full year—this is their place too. The earth-- even if shaped into my gardens-- the plants—even what most call weeds—the sunlight, clouds, winds, stars overhead, all the elements and invisible elementals: this is their place too.
* We extended the driveway, added a patio, created more gardens, learned to keep the meadow, planted raspberries, apple trees, maples, more pines. The spruce and pines Rachel had put in became elders gathered round the house.
As our family expanded we added a garage with a large upper room. I continued to ask after Rachel when I went to the post office. I knew from Ebba’s face she was still taking photos, still updating Rachel, but I didn’t offer to make direct contact myself. I needed boundaries.
Then Ebba left the post office and I forgot about Rachel.
Until a week before this past Christmas. *
I’d dropped Ed off in the mall to do his Christmas shopping and had driven to Trader Joe’s for groceries. The parking lot was packed. After circling three times I decided, if a parking space didn’t open up during the fourth circle I wouldn’t bother going in.
No sooner had I made that decision than a space opened up.
I walked into the store and there was Ebba, weaving her way through the crowd, pushing a shopping cart in my direction. Though we hadn’t seen one another in about four years her first words were, “Rachel is dying!”
Have you ever heard something and, though it’s the first time you’re hearing it, you realize you already know it? Could be that Rachel’s Elder spruce by the back door had been whispering that as I went in and out of the house?
“I talked with her on the phone a few hours ago,“ Ebba continued.
To shorten the story: Rachel’s mother had died several years earlier, Rachel had battled cancer shortly after, had gone into remission, and now it had returned full force. That very morning she had told Ebba she wanted me to have all the papers and photos from the early days when she built the house. Rachel didn’t have email so it was agreed Ebba would tell Rachel to mail the papers to her and she would deliver them to me. Ebba and I exchanged email addresses.
Two days later after swimming laps at the YMCA, a stranger came up to me in the locker room and said, “You don’t know me, but I know you. I’m a friend of the woman who built your house…”
“Rachel?”
“Yes!”
“Has she gone on?”
The woman stared at me in amazement. She didn’t know Ebba but she also was a friend of Rachel, and she also had been taking photos of our house for years, even videos of the night sky over the house, and sending them to Rachel!
“Rachel has spoken of you many times, she thinks of you as her fairy godmother.”
“But why?”
“Because you care.” *
I went home mystified by the whole situation. Of course, I care for her house/our house. But I’d never thought to make direct contact with Rachel or to invite Ebba over, inside the house. With a jolt I remembered the neighbors telling me Rachel had never invited them inside. But rather than puzzle over everything or blame myself for not being more hospitable, I knew I had to thank Rachel yet again and wish her well in her journey onwards.
On my computer, I picked a bunch of photos, including one of our family by the house, and wrote Rachel how they too love the house and want to keep it when the day comes when Ed and I can no longer be here physically. I emailed all to Ebba.
Late the next morning Ebba responded. She was in tears because Rachel had died around the time I was writing her and she would not get to hear my letter or see the photos. But I am certain Rachel heard me and is now freer than she’s ever been since she’d had to let go of “her” beloved house.
Ebba is coming soon for tea, bringing the papers and photos Rachel wanted us to have. I’m hoping there will be a photo of her so I will finally get to see her face.