Old Things

(Maiden)

Matt calls me outside, eager to show me the detail of dying leaves he’s found in the yard. He did this last fall, too. I find it sweet, the fascination he finds in such ordinary acts of nature. He keeps me from slipping into too jaded territory. Autumn is pretty enough, but it means the days of swimming in lakes and rivers are paused, and it means soon my bones will ache with cold. For me, October means bracing myself for winter— and often forgetting to appreciate the current season.

In his hand are rich burgundy maple and oak leaves, splotched with amber and green, gold and yellow veins splintering out from the center. He points out the beauty with innocence and excitement. My lack of matched enthusiasm quietly dismays him, and he crumples up the leaves, returning to the ground, with an “anyway…” that quickly turns my apathy to guilt.

We have lived here for a few months, barely past the one year mark of knowing each other. New love, in an old farmhouse. It is beginning to feel like home. Our landlord says the house was built pre-Civil War, though the Zillow listing says 1900. Hard to say which is more accurate. Either way, the walls have stood through many cycles of life through countless residents. It’s likely both births and deaths have been witnessed here in these rooms. Now, nothing so dramatic, just the constant impassioned kisses of two middle aged people who feel very lucky to have found each other. The front porch is falling in, and there’s a musty smell I can’t seem to air out, but the rent was cheap enough and I’m appreciating much of old farmhouse living.

In the early morning hours my pulse quickens to the sound of a creaky old house, seasonal viewings of horror movies dancing my my psyche, and I am reminded that this is a time when “the veil is thin.” I’m sure we share this space with ghosts, and they might make themselves known if we’d choose to believe in them. The ghosts might be bored observing our mundane, drama free days but it is the kind of happy love that might leave its mark here, in positive energy. I like to think we are breathing new life into these storied walls.

——

(Mother)

My friend Virginia is eight months pregnant. I’ve often heard it said that pregnant women emit a glow of sorts and Virginia reinforces this. She is radiant, really— one of those women who feel unusually optimal during pregnancy and avoid morning sickness. She will be a wonderful mother. Our friends relished the opportunity to throw her a baby shower— she and her husband eloped last year with little warning, and in some small part we felt a personal affront on the sensibilities of friends who enjoy expressing our love through celebrations. When I was tasked with providing decor I delighted in putting my old things to use—bringing an assortment of worn gingham tablecloths and chalkboards. My grandmother’s blue mason jars stood in as vases on each table, holding yellow wildflowers plucked from the cattle field across the fence from my yard. Into her registry gifts I’ve slipped a vintage onesie, rescued from my great-grandparents long abandoned house. It perhaps once belonged to a cousin, maybe even my own mother. It’s a delight to think of an item finding a new use after so long without one, and of my aged decor finding its way into such a modern celebration for such a new, new life.

Virginia is among the youngest of my friends. The rest of us have slipped into our 40s with varying numbers of children and varying levels of acceptance of that number. The presence of a new infant is eagerly welcomed among us, like a jolt of youthful energy.

It seems that energy continues to invigorate even long after the babes are grown. As a hospice volunteer, I’ve been visiting with a patient in her late 80s, 75% lucid. The walls of her room display photos of her holding each grandchild as a newborn, beaming with pride. In her final stage of life she is comforted by the memories of those milestone days, and the legacy they symbolize. She is a great-grandmother now, all of infants in these photos are well into adulthood. But the pride and joy of those early days as displayed in her photos… that’s with you til the end.

Having no children of my own I’ve taken to nurturing creative pursuits and projects, and giving my time to causes. After months of being on a waiting list, October brought the news that a booth was available to rent at a local antique store. I’m now immersed in the art of pulling out old inventory from storage- cataloging, dusting, pricing, writing my booth number on little circle stickers. My farmhouse living room is a staging area— garment racks, hangers, iron, steamer. It is laborious, but satisfying, right up my alley. Life has prepared me well for the opportunity to be an antique booth vendor.

Amid the clutter of the antique store, the booths are piled high with knick knacks. Glassware, kitchen tools, quilts. There is a market for these objects, but it’s niche. In my years of collecting I’ve met many acquaintances who say they would never purchase anything secondhand, citing concerns ranging from cleanliness to cursed objects. Then there are others, like me, who’ve lived our entire lives surrounded by more old things than new. It’s more than mere thriftiness, though surely that plays a role. The most common link between my parents is history, a stronghold root of both their marriage and (subsequently) the identity of their children. Since before I could walk I would accompany my mother as she interviewed aging neighbors, part of her lifelong hobby of collecting local folk history. I’d join my dad on outings with his metal detector, scouting the fields for Civil War bullets, buttons, and if we were really lucky, belt buckles. I found my first arrowhead by his side when I was six, nearly thirty years later I impressed him by finding an ancient stone axe he’d passed over in a washed out field road. In between there were family vacations to historical sites and museums, auctions and storytelling. Mom helped found my hometowns historical society, Dad helped found a local Civil War battlefield preservation organization. Both non-profits have now existed for decades, and my parents are still on the boards. Both have events this weekend, and both have roped me into participating: a ghost tour, and a Civil War reenactment.

And this is how on a Thursday morning I find myself hosing and scrubbing down a dusty hoop skirt that has been stored behind a shelf in my parents' laundry room for decades, part of a reproduction antebellum ball gown my mom wore for Civil War reenactment in the 90s. I’m hoping tourists coming to the Shenandoah Valley for the reenactment will bring some foot traffic into my antique booth, and that this gown might find its next owner. The hoop skirt sits against the rustic cattle fence in my yard, the waist tie fastened to a post. It does not look out of place on a 600 acre farm downhill from where my father tells me a Civil War battle occurred. The scene is only made anachronistic by my presence, the modern woman with graying hair in gray sweatpants and her plastic scrubbrush, tending to a vision of the past.

— —

(Crone)

In between setting up an antique booth, volunteering for local history causes, and working full time at my day job I’m trying to find time to visit my hospice patient. I just finished training over the summer and still feel new to the role, with a good helping of imposter syndrome. It feels heavy, front row tickets to a stage of life I’ve previously rarely witnessed.

There’s a specific smell to a nursing facility. It hits you as soon as you enter the cooridor, some kind of compound of aging skin cells, medical equipment, and cafeteria food. It’s a smell that says no one who lives here is getting out of here alive. I frequent the memory care ward, which sometimes does feel a little like a horror movie- more than once while walking down the long white hallway to my patients room another resident has looked at me with pleading eyes and said “help me.”

One day my patient greets me with warm anticipation and slips me a note. In her crooked scrawl it tells me she’s being held against her will. She is, truthfully. But it is the safest place for her, and a place where all of her needs can be met around the clock. She is confined to a wheelchair, has use of only one arm following a stroke, and her mind is frequently in another decade. She is dependent on the kind of assistance I couldn’t provide, even if her note had appealed me to break her out. I have learned a lot about this woman and the life she’s led, and it’s painful to watch her grapple with her loss of independence. It is easy to see how quickly any one of us can go from the cradle to hospice, how fast a long lifespan can come and go. Her small quarters reflect objects that tether her to her prior life- beyond the photos of family there are souvenirs from travels, handmade quilts she’d patiently stitched, and a doll from her childhood. She’ll depart someday soon, and these objects will stay, windswept into a new beginning— as sentimental keepsakes within her family, or donations that eventually come to live with someone with appreciation for old things.

—

My mother will be telling a story at the town heritage association “ghost walk” fundraiser. Unlike a traditional ghost tour, this one takes place in one location, along a trail on (yet another) former Civil War battlefield. Storytellers are stationed periodically along the trail, assigned a local tale to interpret every 15 minutes to a new group of spectators. My mother tells me they need one more storyteller. I can work at the reenactment on one battlefield in the morning/afternoon and come to the ghost tour at night.

I am assigned a story from an old farmhouse in a nearby community, a young bride who trips on her long bridal veil and falls down a flight of stairs, breaking her neck in the fall. Later residents of the home reported full apparitions of the young bride, and candles on the staircase sniffed out suspiciously. It’s a sad story, and I struggle with finding a way to tell it that honors the possibility of the stories legitimacy without being merely sensational.

Somewhere in my collection of old costumes I find a wedding gown- high collar, long train, ivory with age. My waist is too wide to fasten closed the cascade of satin buttons up the back, though Matt gave it an effort. I decide to make use of the sheer white curtains that were hanging on the farmhouse windows when we moved in, draping them over my head and shoulders to hide my white cotton tee shirt. They also add a spectral flair. While waiting for each group of spectators I place around slowly carrying a lantern. “You looked like a real ghost!” another storyteller tells me after we wrap up for the night. I’m thrilled with the pageantry, but my mind is unsettled. I feel that I’ve tainted the sorrow of the subject of my story by reducing her to a campfire spook, and I’ve tainted this gown that someone wore at their most beautiful by reducing it to a costume. Back home that night I pass by the upstairs landing and note how easy it would be to fall down the stairs— and hope my hubris doesn’t reduce me to a ghost.

—

In November, the wind has picked up, and it howls through the metal roof like claps of thunder. I spend nights snuggled against Matt, his body heat a shield to the draft. My hospice patient is still alive, despite notes from the nursing staff last week that made me think she might not make it until today. I am awaiting news from Virginia, whose due date has come and gone. The ghosts of October have stepped back into the shadows, and I’m already preparing Christmas decor for the antique booth. The reproduction gown didn’t sell, but I made a new friend at the reenactment who was the right size and passed it on to her.

The last of the leaves cling to the trees, though the wind challenges them. Matt has collected a handful of fallen leaves in each stage of life to make a gradient, and is pressing them beneath a stack of cookbooks- he plans to collage them into artwork. I think he’s on to something. It’s easier to notice now the way the leaves tell their own story, one of growth and grace. I reflect on the momentum of the past six weeks and how stages and cycles weaved together— observing the prospect of new life preparing to begin, bearing witness to the last leg of a long life, curating a space where old things find new life, and spreading through story an oral history of the afterlife. Life seems a lot less linear when I notice the intersections and the subtleties of the gradient.

Out the window another gust of wind kicks up and a patch of leaves sweeps across the field, toward the next unknown.