A House Waits

A few weeks ago, in what’s almost become an annual event, a hurricane threatened our coast. This time it was Earl who, down south, flexed his muscles, thumped his chest and set his sights on the northeastern seaboard. But like a lot of his Caribbean pals when meeting up with the icy north Atlantic, Earl wimped out. An “underachiever,” one meteorologist drily noted.

Not that we didn’t prepare. Boats were hauled from their moorings or tucked up into quiet coves. In the Harbor, lines were doubly secured. Lobstermen in certain parts of the Bay pulled their traps. Homeowners stowed deck furniture, cranked in awnings. Some stocked up on bottled water.

In the end, Earl blew our way with sustained and gusting winds about equal to that of a typical nor’easter.  The battering rain lasted most of a day but was, as it turned out, after a hot and dry summer, mostly welcome. The sun came out and things quickly settled down. So much for Earl, we all yawned, another notch in our belts.

Of course it could’ve gone the other way, as we were warned in the days preceding Earl. News reports reminded us that a hurricane had not done Mainers serious damage in decades. We were, it seemed, overdue. And maybe it was because of this, of another encounter with what turned out to be a weak if not merciful hurricane, that made me pause when a few nights after Earl’s blowhard attempt, I returned home after a dinner out with friends and felt immensely grateful approaching our house.

All remnants of Earl’s aftermath long gone, it was an extraordinarily still night, and because of dense cloud cover, very dark. No moon or stars over the water. No filtering porch light – I forgot to leave it on. But the lamp in the living room was lit. Into the damp night with a threat of fog by sunrise, it gave off a soft, amber glow. I crunched my way down the gravel drive, a route I know by feel, inscribed within by the many times I’ve walked from my car, pushed the wheelbarrow from the garage, carried in loads of wood.

Mid-way to the door, I paused under the outermost branches of our sheltering oak. Thanks to Earl and no doubt because of a major and disruptive over-winter house construction project looming on the near horizon, I couldn’t help but note how inviting my house looked with its single amber light.

“A lamp in the window is the house’s eye,” philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote. The eye of a vigilant house. A circle of light that pulls us in and toward it, propelling us even further, he suggests, into the primitive, wall-painted huts of our ancient ancestors gathered around the fire.

Unlike Earl who only brushed past, a microburst a few summers back barreled through a northwest swathe of the island. At our place, it heaved five huge, uprooted spruce trees against the house. But with only minimal damage, it stood steadfast against the storm’s threats and, triumphant, answered the question: “Will you survive?” Likewise, in Earl’s blowing rain, it kept me dry.

Winds blow and rain hurls its full weight against our houses and sometimes they must struggle not to betray us. But a house is a fragile thing. As I approached the threshold across which I’d soon lie in safety, I knew that my house, like anyone’s, can’t always protect me. Our houses can’t  turn away grief, illness or disease, nor guarantee not to collapse beneath death or a poverty of spirit any more than a hurricane or tornado promises to respect a locked door or latched window.

This year, the impending construction project and the medical needs of my father in far-off Arizona, mean my end of season island leave-taking will be earlier than usual and not typical. How, in the way that, before autumn trees are tattered and leaves splatter this gravel drive and choke the gutters, I empty the refrigerator, store bed linens, cover the furniture, pack the car and drive off. What is typical though is the way, after my departure, the nights in long succession will descend upon my house. As will wind, storms, a winter gale. As will the sun which, more than the wind or an occasional storm, knows its way around this house. Many are the times in summer I’ve watched it confidently move over the dining room table or light mantle and hearth, perhaps embrace a dresser’s square-edged bulk, finger with feather-light touch the ceramic pots on a sill. Surely in the months to come, or so I like to think back in Illinois, the sun will again nose around corners and illuminate the empty wastebaskets, flowerless vases, unopened books snug on their shelves. How, during moments I know nothing about, it will lavish light on a particular object as though it has been specially chosen and, with burnishing gleam, is cherished.

Perhaps, for a time, my house enjoys its emptiness. In privacy, it freely creaks or moans expanding its joints after a long cold night. Blanket to chin, it snoozes after a summer of houseguests and banging screen doors, of dents, abrasions, scuffs and scrapes. For a few months, it’s freed from the crows’ noisy morning assembly on the roof and wasps busily probing the eaves. It’s not called on to witness a woman crying over her dead brother’s black zip-neck shirt. It doesn’t need to make room for one more child’s haphazard collection of shattered mussel shells or the surprise of 40 people showing up for a rained-out picnic on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.

A hurricane, such as it was, bore down, and my house, a sanctuary and guardian, once again stood firm. It protected me from the likes of Earl as it did with a menacing microburst. Likewse, another upcoming winter will again provide proof that with or without me, my house exists.

But maybe our houses only fully construct with our presence. Are most fully what a house is when we return to them. With, for example, the crunch of my footsteps in early summer, when I insert the key, push open the door and my eyes, refreshed after a long winter away, look. Maybe only then does my house truly open, room to room, each object flinging itself into form. Because I look. Because I carry in more boxes, fill again the cabinet shelves, open windows that in autumn I lock, and, as night comes, switch on a lamp in the window. Until then, a house that waits.