Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

As I write this, I am looking out the window at the 110-year-old elm tree that fell on my house. The earth surrounding the tree’s base resembles a raised carpet. Sixty-five mile per hour winds toppled it. There it rests, until a tree service comes along with a chipper truck, buzzing chainsaws, and massive loppers. Then, roofers and carpenters will arrive to repair the dented eave and smashed gutter that broke the tree’s fall. In due time, the house will be restored to its former look, with no trace of nature’s tornadic winds having karate chopped this section of the house. The leaning elm is a striking visual reminder of nature’s power, one that can easily turn the sturdiest tree, for a brief moment, into a hovering Mary Poppins.

I cannot help but turn my century-old home into a symbol. This house probably bears more scars than I am aware, hidden by cosmetic changes and renovations, new owners with new intentions. The footprint has been slightly altered from its original construction. The former breakfast nook where the damage occurred is now a small sitting room. Occasionally, I walk around and listen to its creaks, hoping to hear its history, the events and lives of the people who occupied this space long before me, who ran their hands down a banister, who bent to stoke flames in the fireplace, who looked out this very window as the world passed by.

If you are a writer, old houses are more than quaint. They send the imagination down the corridors of time. What did the children dream of? Which songs were sung? What stories did the elders share? What sadness fell upon their souls and how did they tend to their wounds?

Today’s wise poem unearths the idiosyncrasies of an old home and in doing so, reveals how its past and future inhabitants are woven together in time.

To The Buyer of Our Old Home
by Helen Pruitt Wallace

We can tell you, if you want, which doors creak,
       or windows that need to be re-glazed, which faucet
has a tendency to leak, and where a wine glass
       left a halo etched in the counter’s travertine.
And we could share which walls absorb sadness,
       till morning light leans in comforting the contours
of the bed, but chances are you’ll learn this
       on your own. There’s the cough of the AC kicking on,
and the hiss of the heater turning off, and a crack
       in the plaster by the stairs. You’ll study it at times
as metaphor, disaster creeping like the bifurcated lines
       of your palm. But then again, maybe you won’t....
Let’s go outside.

The doorbell never works when it rains. And the riot
       of white gardenias blooming now is always late.
A black snake burrows through ferns, and a cardinal
       spends days hurling himself against our bare window.
We say our, but it’s your house now. Our beloved dog
       was buried over there—along with his chew toys
and bones. And at night our kids’ laughter carries
       through the courtyard of the home (though they
moved out some years ago). And this large oak—
       what can we say? Old limbs keep falling even when no
wind stirs. The tree is gone. We sold because we couldn’t
       chop it down. Still, we hear the woodpecker crazed
as the leaves turn brown.

"To the Buyer of Our Old Home" by Helen Pruitt Wallace. Used by permission of the poet.