BY: LAUREN NEYMAN, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
For the past month, I have lived in a historic house for the very first time in my life. My parents had my family home built when I was a baby, so I’ve never experienced the creaky floors, doors that won’t shut all the way or the oddly shaped rooms that come in tandem with a Victorian-era building until now. There’s an inherently different feeling that accompanies living in a structure occupied by so many before you. The college house I live in now has eight bedrooms, but 100 years ago, perhaps one was a library or a parlor. In my very being, I find myself wondering, What else has happened here?
The home next door to mine is also a Victorian-era home, its red brick laid about 20 years before my own. An elderly woman lives there alone; I don’t know much about her, but I know that she loves watching the songbirds from her sunroom window. Every morning, I observe the timeworn scarlet of her home out of my window, and the green, thick moss covering her roof. I know that moss isn’t healthy for the structure of the home, but there is something about it that I find so beautiful. It tells a story; it’s been a witness to decades of history that I will never know.
Over the summer, I stopped at a roadside antique barn on a whim. Antiques are often expensive, but I found a box of vintage postcards priced at a dollar each. Looking through the box, some were written on, postmarked with dates more than 100 years ago. Witnessing something that someone wrote long ago moved me in a way so human, it almost felt like remembering. One short letter had an address: Woodlawn Avenue. I used my computer to find the house still standing, just how it was in 1908 when the postcard was sent. As I looked closer, I noticed the moss growing on the roof, living proof of the experiences I might not see, but will learn to feel.
