The Dead Pledge Passeth

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It was November 1993.  When my lawyer husband and I discovered I was pregnant with our second child (I thought he was a stomach flu for a few days…) we started talking about moving out of our “starter home” – a 1950s Cape Cod on a tiny plot of land – and into “the big house.” 

 

We both, for similar reasons, were deeply attracted to old homes. When my family got out of the military, we spent several years living with my grandma Greuling in her 1840s Greek revival. Even when Mom remarried and we moved to Syracuse, that house remained the emotional and physical nexus of our whole extended family. My mother, my uncle, my oldest cousin and I all were married on its front porch.

 

 

 

Likewise, Ross had spent some of the happiest years of his childhood in an early 1800s colonial in Newtown, CT, on a rambling piece of land that included stables, gardens and a fish pond with an excitingly dangerous snapping turtle.  

 

So of course, despite having zero experience living in an old home as adults, In March 1994, bought an 1820s Federal farmhouse with three acres of land. 

 

 

What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

 

It was $160,000, which felt like more money than God had at the time, with an adjustable rate mortgage for thirty years, which was a longer time than I could possibly imagine. I would be sixty-two when we finished paying. There was no way I could ever be sixty-two!

 

This Old House has seen a lot in the years I’ve been here. We raised three kids and changed our jobs. Birth and death and illnesses and celebrations. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the adventure that is living in a 200 year old house – from heating with wood to cooling with fans, from struggling to keep the property tamed to Massive Appliance Die Off. 

 

And, dear readers, last month, I wrote my final check to the mortgage holder (the fifth since we first signed those papers in a local bank.) After thirty years, it’s mine, all mine! Amazing!

 

I still can’t quite believe I’m sixty-two, though. 

 

Watercolors by Shari Goddard Shambaugh