This Old House

Donna gets up early and sits in the sunlight on the front step with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. At any given time of year, she knows where the warmest, sunniest spot will be, and she knows the creaks and whispers of this old house, every quirky angle of its walls, every odd turn and staircase, the precise location of the light switches and the little drafts of air that enter here and there, the pockets of coolness, the scent of each room.

"I could walk around in total darkness in this house," she tells me, "and I'd know exactly where to go. I'd move right through the dark and wouldn't bump into anything."

It takes a long time to get to know a house so well, and Donna has lived in this one for more than twenty years. She and her husband Mike raised children here, now grown and gone, shared meals, celebrated birthdays and holidays, appreciated every-days.The house is over a hundred years old and frankly looks its age. It's not one of those narcissistic gals all gussied up with aluminum-siding and pastel colored trim. It's a house that has evolved over time, a house that has been weathered into its own kind of beauty, wood aged and faded and flaking artfully, structures sagging and leaning into grace, the warp of antique window glass rendering the sky a little dreamier...a sense of story everywhere.

There's a shed out back, maybe once a carriage house, now a depository for broken chairs and bicycles. There are prayer flags and Christmas lights, and a pizza oven that looks like a small shrine of stones, and Donna's rambunctious garden. There's a circular table and a cluster of lawn chairs, and there have been many gatherings of friends out there on summer evenings, with me sometimes among them. There were kids, too, whose voices I can almost still hear.

If I were to take you inside the house, you'd see colorful paintings on the walls, shelves of bowls and books and memorabilia, masks and mirrors, comfy chairs. Nothing seems deliberate or knolled, and yet it works, in the way a patchwork quilt does, or an eclectic collection of music. There's a small white plaster statue of a girl Donna bought one rainy day in Florence (I know because I was with her) seated on a miniature chair by the front door, and there are coats slung casually on a hook, and photographs of familiar faces. Everything says welcome, stay awhile, improvise.

And because it's Donna's house, and Donna is Donna, there is often the fragrance of a pie or cookies baking or posole simmering on the stove or fresh basil pesto. Almost certainly there will be lemonade.

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