Dear Laura,
Sometimes you recongnize a place not by the way it looks but by a reaction that comes upon you from out of nowhere.
Driving back up to my mom's, on my way back from who knows where, I made it past Durham and, without really thinking, got out my North Carolina map, turned off the interstate and wandered along Route 70. It only took a few miles before I felt tears coming to my eyes and a shaking in my chest. It took me a minute, and it took me by surprise, but I realized that, yes, I had been on this road before.
Long before the subdivisions, before the carefully planned developments, and before the Ralaigh-Durham area became the hot place to be, a lost young woman once drove out this road with a handsome young man. She had met him only once before, but for various and forgotten reasons she felt an attraction to him that she somehow felt compelled to explore. It was winter then, a rare and crusty snow watching this couple of kids who barely knew love, much less each other, as they drove an old but smooth pontiac past the deserted farmlands. The girl was driving and tipsy and wondering the usual things that girls wonder when they're driving in the country with handsome boys they don't know well.
The girl was driving with her mind on things other than the scenery when the boy said "Stop, let's get out here and walk for a bit". The girl pulled into a driveway of an old and empty farmhouse. They got out, walked up an unplowed driveway, stopped and briefly kissed under a bare and dying oak, before exploring the runs of a forgotten North Carolina homestead.
It was all but fallen down - even at her younger age the girl could feel North Carolina's winter teeth eating slowly into its beams and joists. The front rooms were in good enough shape but the addition at the back was leaning sharply to the east and the second floor porch was falling.
That afternoon and again that night there were more kisses, but for reasons long since forgotten, nothing more as the girl fell into a nervous sleep next to the boy. And though they would stay friends for a few years, nothing else would become of their kisses or the boy's sweet December smile.
But today it hits me hard, maybe because I had forgotten him, or maybe because I truly had not realized where I was - those quiet winter fields replaced by late summer subdivisions. But then I remember - my throat suddenly tight and dry, wondering about that house. I'm sure it will be gone - it was barely standing then - but I'm hoping I might recongnize or feel the spot where it sat, so quiet and peaceful on that long ago winter day. I think I will know. I was there for an hour at the most, but the feeling's growing stronger now - I'm remembering details that I had lost years ago - the coat I wore, the sound his boots made crunching snow, kisses in a windy kitchen with no ceiling.
I wonder often where this feeling comes from - this connection I seem to feel with the abandoned. Until today it never occurred to me that it all might stem from warm kisses on a cold day under a scraggley oak tree. The feeling of excitement at exploring places and feelings that were so new to me. But whatever the reason, I've spent a fair amount of my adult life absorbed by things and places that were, for whatever reason, cast off by others. I drive along today reaching out for that sort of connection - the feeling growing stronger now - too strong - my eyes welling with tears for no good reason. I can tell now that I will find it. I can tell. Down this hill, over this bridge and up the other side. That will be the spot. Will it be a subdivision? A convenience store parking lot? Or just an empty field?
Then I see it. The only possibility I never would have considered. The house of winter kisses - once so precious and cold, so sacred and scarred - now repaired, repainted, remodeled. In the spot where a slow and steady pontiac once parked, a sign now reads "Winthrop's Gate - Bed and Breakfast".
Once two pairs of footprints crunched their way all alone through stale snow, now a paved and landscaped driveway escorts tourists to their tasteful country getaway. Once an ancient oak watched over nervous kisses, now bradford pears - whose careful and particular arrangement was probably determined by a well-paid landscape architect in Raleigh - produce no fruit as they watch city folks pretend to be in the country. Once a fallen down sleeping porch smiled down on two kids through its distress, now a pre-manufactured sunroom keeps breakfast diners in climate-controlled comfort.
You may think me strange for valuing the fallen-down. You may wonder what it is that makes me yearn for peeling paint and rotting roofs over repairing and giving new life to the sweet and the dying. And I'm not sure I can give you an answer. But somewhere, deep in my heart, there's a history that I cling to. A history that has less to do with a house and more to do with the spirit of what the house was about.
-Ellen, Hillsborough, North Carolina