5/31/2012
“Reconstructing a Family”
We toured our “new” home yesterday, in a walk-through with the builder, to ensure we were working off the same blueprints. Save, improvise, innovate have been keywords as of late.
After touring the first and second floors, we ascended to the third, the former servants’ quarters. The back roofing had been removed, rafters reinforced, and the middle of the back wall had been broken down, bricks torn away to make space for a raised roof and observatory deck.
I posted the picture on Facebook and a few of my friends following this project commented on my “a real hole in the wall” caption. One friend asked, “Is this the beginning, or are there many?” This friend is, of course, one of my writer friends, inclined to ask the deeper questions, which in turn prompted me to wonder. When was the beginning of this project, how will we know the end?
After working feverishly on my first book six years ago, it was not until I wrote the ending, felt satisfied about the ending, that I had arrived at a station in life in which I had found peace. Perhaps not healing, for that goes on forever, but peace in the sense, I could sleep at night. Peace in the sense of what one finds when traveling alone to Sante Fe, New Mexico. From there, I knew I would begin the story, with a snippet from my time in Oceanside, Oregon.
Two years ago we began touring the Gateway Quarter, which parts of the OTR had been branded as such, to add luster to a part of town in need of shining up, “just to get out of the house in February”. Now, our project of reconstructing an 1870s Italianate home in the very same neighborhood is in high gear. And still, when asked to tell the story of its beginnings, I cannot recall any anecdote that sums up this decision.
Perhaps it begins last night, when our third daughter graduated from high school, with high honors and even higher hopes. Not only was the matriculation of number three worth contemplating in the how quickly the years had past, but my husband and I often fail to give ourselves credit for the time and effort to make this marriage work, to make this family bond, suffice it to say, that even a White Castle run, following graduation, and a sit-down at 10 p.m. with the kids counts towards this goal. Every little action can quickly add or detract when the subject is stepfamilies.
Perhaps our reconstruction story begins with wanting something to call our own, since we each brought children into the marriage, but had none together. Perhaps it was a call to our inner artist, the city coaxing more out of us. Perhaps it begins with fashioning a home where our growing and adult children can return to, a family home, not “their house” or “yours.”
I liken this reconstruction to that of building a family. The foundation of 1419 Race has existed, held up for 150 years. The footprint of the original home is intact, with parlor situated in the front, along Race Street, though the dining room will become the kitchen, but we are not moving walls back or eliminating any, though we will open up the space and allow for the energy and light to pass through.
The summer kitchen fell down sometime ago. We will replace it with a rooftop terrace. And where servants certainly looked out from their third floor quarters to see the happenings in the back alley, we too will have a view of the alley, of Music Hall of the skyline in the city we have made home from our third floor observation deck.
We will sand some surfaces, paint others, replicate and replace where needed and possible. We will adjust some of the exterior to conform to modern-day codes designed to preserve latter day traditions.
We will save as many bricks as possible for future use along the garage walls, courtyard, so that we may be conscious of the hands that formed and placed the bricks in their original location.
It is what any family does, especially those with bonus members, they smooth out the rough surfaces, adjust some things on the outside, try to hold on to past traditions, keep the walls, though parts of them need to come down.
Our son, a rising high school junior, recently told me, “I won’t be living here. I’ll just be staying here.” Which is fine by me. Our children’s lives should always be outside the walls of a family or home. But when shelter is needed, they will have a place to stay.
Reconstruction, according to Websters refers to the “process by which the states that had seceded were reorganized as part of the Union after the Civil War.
The period during which this took place is 1865–77, which ironically is the period during which our home was constructed.
I like the idea of reconstructing a family, though no one seceded, we did have to reorganize and come into the union.
