I would have missed it if I had not been particularly receptive at that time. It was a brief moment, gone almost as soon as it happened. I sat in my small living room, having fallen, as I sometimes do, into a kind of trance, or you might say, daydream with no story line. My eyes fell to the dusty black edge of the fireplace insert I had installed into the old chimney. I am at a loss to describe the uneasy state of non-feeling that came over me as I held the gaze. I was affected by a detached stillness, a dark somberness, empty of emotion. As I mentioned, the incident was momentary, and for that I am glad. I think sadness, or grief, or anger could be easier to tolerate than that unsettling void of all feeling.

The house, when I first saw it nearly three years ago, was a ramshackle old cottage near a lake, pleasing in appearance from a distance, and situated between two somewhat parallel roads that curved around to meet each other. The shorter road was rutted and unpaved, and because of the extended corner formed by the curving paved road, the half-acre lot was adjacent to no other property, on all sides but one. That one side was bordered by a wooded slope and at a good distance from the nearest neighbor to the north. The house sat on the side of a hill that sloped toward the lake and a half-dozen rooftops of what had also been summer cottages in times past.

Up close, the house was a worn old thing, but strong of structure and foundation. It was a small, single-story building, not more than 700 square feet of living area, that had been vacant for two years, and for sale even longer. It would need painting everywhere. Walls, floors, and ceilings were yellow with age and scarred from use. The basement was filthy, and spiders and unmentionable creatures were calling it home. Doors, and several windows, were dilapidated. There was no subflooring, and no insulation in the attic. The stone chimney was visibly cracked and deemed not healthy enough to be used. The kitchen and bath would need appliances and fixtures. Floors would need refinishing and three layers of very old linoleum would need to be removed from the small kitchen. Major plumbing work would have to be completed before occupancy, and the 50-amp electrical system was way past due for an update. The furnace at least—the heart of the place—was in good working condition.

I cannot explain the pull I felt for the old cottage on first sight of it, and even more on inspection of its interior. From that first moment, and on through months of negotiations and title research, I sensed that I belonged to the house and it to me. No bank would touch it for a mortgage, but I sold my city co-op and worked out some renovation finances with a local credit union.

I should tell you that I am old, but not as old as the house. The house was built in 1936. I was born nine years later. It took seven and a half decades for us—the house and me—to find each other. Do you wonder why, in my advanced years, I would undertake such a massive restoration project? Until now, I haven’t bothered to grapple with that question. There were detractors, of course, when I made it clear that I would buy the cottage.

“You can’t do it,” said my New York City friend.

“I’m going to,” I told her.

“No,” she said. “You can’t. You will be alone. There will be bears!”

“I’m going to do it,” I said.

A younger friend pouted about it for months. She did not want to talk to me about house renovations. She wanted to get back to our frumpy, old discussions of the faltering ways of the world, of her anguish over boyfriends, of natural urges that flame up in opposition to sense, of God and eternity and the inequities of happiness. She wanted to discuss confounding ideas, as if by talking we could come to understand the inexplicable. I wanted to finish painting the basement floor and stack the cut wood to have it ready for winter.

“You are distracting yourself from your own remorse and depression,” she said.

“Except that I am not feeling remorseful and depressed,” I countered.

The families across the road from me appeared to share an interest in my obsessive care of the old cottage that for them had been a familiar, unchanging sight. They saw me on the job with workmen who came and went, repointing and re-siding and grading and repairing. They watched as the rotting deck and stairs on the front of the house were pulled away and the new deck and stairway grew to replace it. They saw me work with a handyman to install a railing beside the old stairs down to the mailbox. And they had many hours to witness my creation of steps from the house up to the old garage. Between three-foot lengths of railroad ties spiked into the slope of the yard, I removed the sod, leveled the ground, laid landscaping fabric over the sections, and shoveled in gravel to form each step, finishing the job by setting in bluestones given me by one of the workmen. I re-leveled and readjusted those steps for months afterward. They still need some work.

“What are you doing,” a neighbor once asked.

“Well, for one, keeping the mud out of the house,” I said.

There was always a friendly, if distant, mixture of puzzlement and awe from those who watched the progress. Chatting with another neighbor, I commented, “You must have wondered what in the world that old lady across the street was up to.”

“It’s been entertaining,” he replied. “I won’t lie.”

My aesthetic leanings held reign over the practical improvements, as new shades brought some grace to the renovated sunroom, paint colors were chosen for their subtlety, and rugs and artwork were integrated nicely into the restoration. On a few hot summer afternoons, I dug out a bed for a flower garden on the slope to the mailbox. One of my neighbors was so concerned she brought me a bottle of water.

“It’s too hot for this,” she said, and I thanked her.

I planted two apple trees, a dogwood, and a weeping willow. I am too old ever to see them resplendent in their maturity, but someone else will be glad to have them there. With help I constructed net fencing around the little willow, and after a rain I spray the apple trees with deer repellent. I truly do not worry about bears.  

I came to understand, gradually, as I made those many improvements, that I have lived my many years like a house on a hill, like a quirky old place surrounded by its sturdy, conventional neighbors. Apart but cared for, watched over. I have the sanity of a strong foundation and I have a good heart. As in any life, there have been barbs and scrapes along the way. Repairs were needed, as were better pathways into new times. The old cottage and I intertwined ourselves, and I am fixing us.

I know that the iron-black darkness that wafts occasionally through my daydreams will grow into its fullness, detaching us—the house from me, and me from the house. And I will know that I have done the work. I have readied my house for a splendid new life, one I cannot possibly know anything about. And I have readied myself for new life, however and whenever that will happen, when I move on into the mysteries of something else entirely.