This Old House

Articles on home maintenance warn about breaks
in the plaster: how they may be a sign of something
more serious in the foundation, or that the soil 
underneath has shifted and softened through the years, 
or both. But it's simply the way things go as they 
get older and more worn. Chips in the stucco, 
scratches on once smooth sanded floors. When  
we moved in, this house was also already old. 
Having been vacant for some time, it was as if 
the pipes sighed awake from a long drought 
the first time we ran the showers and flushed 
the toilets. The realtor found a small nest 
of rodents in the crawl space, and called 
extermination services. We learned new words 
like soffit, fascia, and transom window; and also 
that the modest, side-gabled Cape Cod style dates 
back to the 1800s. From the floor outline in the apron-
sized dining room and a full window set into the wall 
behind the hutch, we can see some of the original 
bones of this house: how and where more rooms 
were added, even as closet space remained the same 
for times when people may have had a need for much 
less in their lives. In summertime, men in shorts 
and baseball caps knock on doors in the neighborhood, 
asking Do you have spiders, mosquitoes, ants, and 
are they a problem for you? We always turn them 
away. Sometimes, a tiny green grasshopper comes in. 
Sometimes, a cricket trills unseen in a corner. 
Moths are our favorite— we like to think they're 
visitations from our dead, gone so many years but there,
like a glimmer of something precious in the cracks.