Roseneath

I'm going to tell you a story. It is the story of a house, and this house was called Roseneath in years gone by, and in more recent times has been referred to simply as "Barton," after the Nova Scotian community in which it is found.

You could say I grew up in this house, and you could say this even if you knew I never lived there - even then you wouldn't be far off, because I came to this house every summer - I mean every single summer of my entire existence - while growing up. In this sense I grew up here even more than in the parsonage on Brier Island (eight years) or in Dipper Harbour (fifteen years). My mother can say the same, and her brothers and sisters can too, and their father before them (though only for most of his life, not all of it). Great-Grandfather Taylor acquired it as a summer home in Grampy's youth and his descendants have gathered at Barton - in varying numbers and degrees of chaos - ever since. So here, in pictures, is how those visits went.

There are two important elements in this photograph. The main one is of course the road sign; when you reach this sign you're less than a minute away from the house. The second is the steeple - barely visible against the cloudy sky I know, but it's there, to the left above the trees. And every single year my siblings and I would have a fierce 2- second competition around who could spot that steeple first from the back seat of the Thunderbird/K-Car/minivan (in that order). And unlike almost every other competition in childhood, it didn't matter who won. Unlike anything else at all, we were happy no matter who it was because anyone winning at all meant that we were really close. And then - just one more hill and then - then just around this very last bend and then - there it was, swinging up and away from the road under a canopy of maple trees: the driveway.

...I would hate to understate the excitement engendered by this driveway in the minds of road-weary backseat warriors. At any rate, it looks - and in my lifetime has always looked - like this:

Swinging left at the top, Dad would park the car just about here - the house on the right and this old shed on the left.

Much more important than the shed, though, was the tree in front of it, and the big blue rope swing with its first inviting chance to stretch limbs and shake off the trip. Then it was a dash through the back door into that ancient kitchen to smell the old smells and pass all the old furniture on our way to hug any relatives who might have beat us to the place that summer.

To the interior. I have from sheer negligence omitted many rooms and passages, so this post is fragmentary and there's nothing I can do about it. This is the front hall, perpetually ill-lit:


The staircase on the left has always been one of my most vivid memories: every creak of the steps, every dull curving edge worn down by generations - no two are now the same but I know them all, as we all know them - light-coloured where time and use have won, dark as night where the varnish has. And that railing - oh, that ailing, failing railing. I never trusted the way it moved, you see; not the kind of thing you'd be brave enough to slide down, even as a kid.

On to sturdier things: here is the study to the right of the hall.

In it you can see the pump organ which has defied all reason in being fully functional to this day. The clock to the right has a note inscribed in pencil on the back: "Cleaned and repaired, June 29th, 1888." I would say that it was due for its next appointment except that it, too, is still in perfect working order.

The front door is never used, and neither therefore is this chair. But whenever I passed it in that gloomy hallway, and saw the old fragile curtain playing in the breeze across the doily on the back of the chair, I couldn't resist picturing some ancient fellow sitting there a century ago, writing in a book or waiting for a carriage.

Here is the tap in the old claw-footed tub upstairs. With the help of a rubber hose borrowed from the antediluvian washer downstairs it became the worst imitation of a shower you've ever seen. Get there first in the morning and you'll have hot water.

The ceilings have... character.

I slept in the attic, where the gaps in the plaster were much larger and more curiously shaped than this; year after year I would lie awake at night staring at them, finding shapes in the exposed slats like you do with clouds.

This will have to do for the current post. There are more pictures to come - of me as a small child at Barton and of Simeon there too. For now though, one more picture as nature slowly reclaims the place; and the last words go to my father, who wrote this poem following our latest visit:

This old house is quiet for most of the year
The pictures look down on silent rooms
The figurines still where little hands last placed them
Upstairs, blankets are folded on beds
Morning into noon, evening into night
This old house shelters its myriad memories
Of running happy children
Of laughter and loud voices on midsummer nights
Of those who will never come through its doors again
This old house
is quiet
and waits