Ashes, Ashes We All Fall Down

I know that we are supposed to love people and not things, but I love my husband and he loves his grandparents' house. And, he found out today that it, as well as the 200-year-old trees on the property, are being torn down tomorrow, July 25, by the person who bought it to make way for a new, supposedly better house. 

I have never been inside this house that I've heard so much about.  It rests on the bank of the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and by the time I met Bryan, it had been sold because his grandmother could not take care of it alone.  I have driven by it, too many times to count, as we make the trip from Ohio to my in law's house in the mountains.  It is stately and beautiful from the outside, but it has not been a home for a long time.  Like many of the older homes on Front Street, once the premier residence in Harrisburg, it is now a business, bought by a company who saw the value in its size and what it could offer.  It is built of mostly stone as many Pennsylvania houses are and was the home of Bryan's grandparents until his grandfather passed away.  It is where his mother grew up and where he spent a lot of his childhood days.

I know stories of foot-deep window sills that made for the perfect reading spot.  I know of the garden plot his grandfather started and let others plant in and how Bryan enjoyed the vegetables that were grown there.  I have seen this house's contents, beautifully maintained in my in law's house, which is where Bryan's grandmother lived until she passed away a few years ago.  When my in laws built their house that Mary Keller (Bryan's grandmother) called home for the last 20+ years of her life, the living room was built exactly to size to hold the area rug from her own home.  All her antique furniture was there, too, and stories always unfolded about who did what in this room or that, sitting on this chair or couch, and it made the new home containing these family treasures feel not old, but worn in and familiar, like the Velveteen Rabbit who became real with love. I always felt other worldly sitting with her on a couch from the early 1900's, taken back in time to days that seemed long gone, slow paced and more peaceful than the lives we live now.

My heart aches that it is being demolished.  I know that time marches on and stops for no one and that like the nursery rhyme, we all fall down.  I know that the new owner of this address, 4415 North Front Street, has no idea what he is tearing down. I am sure what he builds will be lovely.  But it won't be the home forged by the hard work, masonry and woodworking of true craftsmen from our grandparent's time.  It won't have the details the old house contained because homes just don't anymore.  It won't have the memories of a family who lived there and considered it their heart.  And it won't be the place that made my husband into the man he is today.

Being in Ohio, I feel trapped. I want to drive there tomorrow, take pieces of this house from the rubble and turn them into something that can live on in my own home. A door, a window sill, a frame, pieces of stone.  All the things that will be separate, disjointed and mangled tomorrow were for so many years the fabric of the people I love.

But, I can't do that.  What I can do is realize that I am forging my own home for my family and that I can't know now what will be that one thing that for some reason, holds onto my children's heart strings the strongest.  I am reminded of how little things matter.  A tomato from a garden. A window seat that is cool in the summer. A chestnut tree in the yard to climb. And always a warm embrace to welcome you. These are the stuff of family; of my family.

Here is a link to the home at 4415 North Front Street.  Good bye sweet girl.

http://goo.gl/maps/4Zvc