Two or three houses ago, we sold the big 1904 uninsulated house that was the first home we bought (and found the heating bills in the dead of winter were double our mortgage payment) sooner than we thought we would. We had put it on the market when the snow was so deep our realtor couldn’t get the “for sale” all the way into the ground. We found another house quickly—-too quickly because the people who were selling it hadn’t bought THEIR new house. They did let us store our stuff in their basement and we rented a dark apartment with a terrible green shag rug and a one-window living room that looked out onto a parking lot while the bedroom windows looked onto High Street.
When we finally were able to occupy the new place a couple of months later (it might have been more; it certainly felt like it), and started bringing stuff up from the basement, a peculiar thought came to mind. It was as if we were doing an archaeological excavation. Here was the lamp table for the living room. There was the frame of a bed for one of the children’s rooms. That box had 20th century bathroom supplies and another held late 20th century kitchen appliances.
It was different from usual moves where professionals with a big truck lug things out of one house and sets them up in the new one. These were things that had disappeared from our lives for a period of time and now were being rediscovered, if you will.
Kind of exciting.
Sometimes when we’ve been gone for a couple of weeks, I play a little mind game and try to imagine that we are entering Jefferson City for the first time. What are my impressions?
From the west we get a stunning view of the Capitol framed by the Dix Road overpass. From the east we drive past back yards and roadside businesses and offices as the traffic seems to funnel into an unimpressive area of concrete and traffic lights and ultimately an interchange if we want to take it. Sometimes don’t even notice the Capitol. From the south we crest the Ellis Boulevard hill and there’s the dome dramatically shining above the trees and against the dark bluffs and from the north, there’s the view of the Capitol overlooking the great river.
And when we come home to a place that has been empty and silent (except for Max and Minnie and once a day a visiting cat-sitter, Mary), I briefly imagine we have entered a well-preserved early 21st century townhouse that appears to have been frozen in time by the people who once lived there.
The feeling dissipates quickly, of course, as life returns to normal within an hour or two.
But it’s kind of fun and it lets me see today’s world from a little different perspective. We’ve visited a lot of famous homes of notable figures or barracks rooms at 1870s frontier forts or other historic sites restored or recreated with period furnishings and in fifty years or so there really will be houses from our times that let our descendants see how we lived today. Today’s possessions are tomorrow’s artifacts. Today’s nick-nacks will be found in antique store sale cases.
The wonders of our age will have become museums or museum pieces. The things we think are advanced technology today will seem primitive then.
We will be what our great grandparents are to us.
The experience can have a leveling effect on our pride of having the things we have. Maybe it will trigger some thinking about our attitudes and how they will be regarded generations hence by those who wonder, “How could they think like that?” or “How did they get along with just those_______,” or “It took a lot of work to live in those days,” or maybe just, “Isn’t that interesting?”
It never hurts to try to look at our life and times through pretend new eyes. You never know what you might see.
