The little white house

This is maybe a blog entry that Curt should be writing. The little white house, after all, was the one he was brought home from the hospital to. It was, in fact the first house his parents bought when they were married. When they moved in, the old man they bought it from, too old to look after himself or his farm anymore, cried when they pruned back the lilacs and begged them to let him live with them. It was an old lathe and plaster house with thin pine floors, a dirt cellar, an attic, and a bathroom that was tacked on as an afterthought. (The original outhouse stood broken down in the bush.) When Curt was 2, his parents built themselves a new home a few yards away from the little white house. It became a rental. Curt collected childhood memories surrounding the people and families that filled that place as the years passed. There was a young martial artist who would run the rough surrounding fields in bare-feet. Curt thought he was the coolest and toughest. Once he tied Curt and his sisters upside down in the barn and left them there. That maybe wasn't so cool...but it was tough. He had an orange truck that he abandoned when he moved out. Years later, when we saw him again, he gave the truck to Curt. There was a young couple that came from Newfoundland and started their family there. The husband, Charles was a quiet carpenter and a musician. He taught Curt how to make a small bench and a wood box when he was 8 and for those years the little white house was filled with music and little ones. I remember visiting and my dad playing east coast music with Charles. During the course of our married life, we lived there twice. When we were first married, we slept in a single bed on the main floor. Not long after, we decided to fix up the attic as our bedroom to make room for a nursery for our new baby Darren. The water pump made fantastically loud sounds all through the day and night and if i ran more than one appliance at a time, the power would go out. I would trudge out to the power pole and switch it back on again. Two weeks after Carrie was born, we moved away and the house was rented out again and again. One renter was busted for growing illegal plants in the attic and there was a gunned take-down through the fields after the man hopped out the window to escape. While we built our first home, we moved back into the little house. This time we filled it to the brim. We packed bunk beds in one room with a dresser which left a little alleyway for walking. The other room took the crib and dresser. We put another bed in the stairway to the attic. In the living room we crammed our king bed and one more child's bed. It was an interesting year of homeschooling and i don't think we missed any sleep-walkers/talkers or any seizures while we lived there that year! It felt like we were all sleeping in the same room! The reason this all comes to mind i guess is that tonight my kids sold 2 goats to the new renters of the little white house. They are a family from Malta. (Remember the Bible story of St. Paul being shipwrecked on Malta?...that's the one.) They were going to butcher some goats and rabbits tonight and the kids asked if they could go over and watch. Carrie would not go as it was hard enough for her to sell the goats in the first place. Darren stayed till the gory end and is still not home. The other girls came home telling me of how the Maltese prepare the tongue and the brains and were quite interested with those cultural facts. It fascinates me the idea that a house can stand and shelter a hundred years worth of people. How many stories and lives have shuffled through that little geographical place and called it home?