Elsa and the house... Submitted by Dave
In 2000, Barb and I arranged a mortgage to purchase an ancient, center chimney colonial located on a dirt road in a corner of a small town. While the documents and payments proved the mortgage, somewhere in the small print we unwittingly agreed to a multiple adoption.
Elsa Atwood Griffin and her house adopted us. Elsa came to us from across the years in a photograph rolled up and tucked in a corner in the attic. We carefully unrolled the old scroll and Elsa greeted us with an expression that said, “Yes, I’m pleased to see you, but what took you so long?” In, perhaps, her first trip away from home, she ventured to Concord where she was cleaned, matted and framed. Pleased with herself, she now holds court from a high spot in the dining room over the mantel.
Elsa’s wry smile radiates an indomitable spirit reminding us this was her house and that she is our responsibility now.
During the recent four day ice storm induced power outage, the old women, Elsa and house, tormented us with the quirks of their personalities. The house came into existence in the late 1700s or early 1800s hewn by rough hands working against time and elements to provide shelter. Both Elsa and house spent most of their lives without the convenient modern versions of heat, light and water. Generations of inhabitants gathered wood, collected water and burned candles to satisfy the house’s requirements in exchange for shelter and care. Not until the 1980s did electricity and water enter the house.
With temperatures dropping into the high 30’s in the rest of the house, we retreated and huddled in the dining room, where Elsa could watch us and our efforts. It had taken us a cold day and night to remember that the size and location of the dining room made it the most responsive to the heat provided by the fireplace. More than one dinner party had been overheated by the modest efforts of the little fireplace. This was also the fireplace least likely to smoke us out or light the wooden mantel pieces on fire. With some effort and lots of wood, the temperature in the room rose into the high 50’s, but smoke she did whenever we failed to build the fire just right or a puff of breeze came up from the west.
In the end, and in a mystery fit for the ages, the pipes didn’t freeze. The water that flooded the basement didn’t kill the oil burner. But we did make “basement soup” from our stored root crops. The fires in the fireplaces didn’t burn the house down and the kids have memories of crowding together in our bedroom while Barb and I took turns reading “A Christmas Carol”.
Elsa and the house are a lot of work. They never let you take them for granted and you can’t leave them for long for fear the old house might, with Elsa’s impish encouragement, wander off its foundation. But if you listen, their wisdom speaks across the years about enduring hardships. Elsa’s smile says, “You got yourself into this. You’ll get yourself out. It does little good to complain, so get on with it.”
Fortified by the knowledge that we have weathered another in a string of memorable disasters, we wait for the next challenge that nature, our house and Elsa have for us.
