In So Many Words | Anakalian Whims

She Belongs to the Woods

December 4, 2013 at 4:54 am (In So Many Words) (A.K. Klemm, deer, forest, hunters, She Belongs to the Woods, Short Stories, woods)

A Short Story by A.K. Klemm

The fawn folded its new legs beneath the soft tuft of its under belly, collapsing ever so gently into the pallet of leaves under the shadow of the thicket. It was vulnerable, but strangely content, hidden from the dangers of the world beyond the green. The chin rubbed against one of its three hundred white spots, the eyes drooped closed, and the fawn went to sleep.

The doe left her baby tucked in the thicket, confident it would be safe but leery nonetheless. A mother could never be completely sure their babies were safe, but she’d done this before and this was the routine. She wouldn’t be more than a hundred yards off and the fawn would be asleep while she was away, so it wasn’t likely that it would make any noise that would give away its location.

The mother darted off, never to return, unwillingly surrendering her offspring to the woods.

When the fawn awoke, each sound, each danger, the wind, the rain, and all other possible threats forced the deer’s ears to flicker and head to lie flat against its own back. Eyes peered through the foliage, searching for its mother, longing for some kind of nurturing love, while the world outside continued to call its name. Here, little deer, come, come, now little deer…

Leaves rustled, dark turned to dawn and the sun shining through the thicket lent itself to flickering shadows and tricks of light. The spots were an effective camouflage, something to help keep it hidden from the world, but it didn’t fool the eyes of the seasoned hunter.

He approached the thicket in the early light, hoping a doe would dart out so he could shoot. He needed something to bring home to his family, and he was here hunting with others. They were off in the distance, sticking to the trails and paths to the water, following tracks. He was different, he sought out the ones hiding in safety, tucked away.

Quickly, he realized there was no doe. He saw only a small baby deer, shivering in the fog. The shake of the skin rippled up its back, causing the spots on its back to look like a flicker. These spots may seem to be a blemish to such a smooth finish, a lovely coat, but they generally kept the creature preserved for the future. Out of sight. Safe.

The hunter watched for a moment. He and the baby deer made eye contact, taking each other in. She was frightened, of course, but as he lowered his gun she seemed to relax. Somehow she knew what the hunter knew, no harm would come to her while he was present. The hunter’s brow furrowed as a shot cracked in the distance. The fawn ducked her head low with a squint.

For most, a fawn alone does not mean it has been abandoned; its mother is always within earshot, there to protect and guide. Fawns are supposed to learn from their mothers. Sure, like any mammal, they are born with innate survival skills, but their mother is the one that shows them the way. They rely on them completely. But this fawn’s mother was gone. Both fawn and hunter knew that she was suddenly alone. Very alone.

Tiny and frail and being sought out by predators in the wood, the hunter winced at his own involvement. He wanted to protect this tiny thing and here he was – part of the problem. He moved a branch, tucked a few sticks around the opening, and ensured no one else would see what he had seen. No one else would be led here, no one else could spy on his baby deer. Because she was his now. He became territorial. He loved her.

He went home with his party, hung his gun above the mantle, and sat with his family by the warmth of the fire. He didn’t share his adventures in the woods with them, he didn’t tell them what he saw there. The fawn was his secret. He heard a howl in the night and thought of the wolves in the dark. They were rabid and forbidding, the hunter’s mind raced, they’d be looking for meals for their own young. The hunter looked out the window and saw the telltale signs of ice soon to fall from the sky. He imagined what would happen when his friends went out the next morning… Boots tromping down trails, crunching leaves and snow drift, breaking icicles off limbs, destroying what was essentially the little mammal’s front porch… and he vowed to go check on her. The weather itself was a threat. No one is there to keep the baby warm, it must rely on burying itself in leaves, its nest, its nook.

The Hunter’s lover called from another room and, distracted, he left the window, forgetting the baby deer and his promise to himself to check on her. His mind was on more important matters of the heart and she was forgotten.

Despite all that, despite being unguarded, an easy target, improperly instructed on the ways of life… this fawn did not lack instinct. Instinct that told her to lie low, to blend in, become one with its environment and do her best to not raise a fuss or get noticed. She belonged to the woods, and ultimately, she knew that the woods were her threat and her home, her danger and her safety.

It takes a strong backbone to wait so patiently, and the little fawn indeed had a strong one.

Storms raged all around the wood, but the deer had found shelter. Through rain and wind, through lightning storms, and crashing tree limbs, through fires erupting from natural electricity, she knew when to wait… when to hunker down and muster up calm when terrified. The deer, alternately, also knew when to stick her neck out finally and forage for sustenance; and as a three week old could already out run most the dangers the woods threatened. Once fed, she kept a steady habit of retreating back to her nest to rest and save energy to grow. So that she would continue to survive.

The hunter had a caring heart and between distractions would come back to the deer in the wood. He found her nesting place undiscovered by foes and kept a periodic eye on this seemingly timid creature. Every now and then he thought he should try to save her, momentary lapses in judgment urged him to want to take her home. Feed her warm milk, offer the nurturing she had always lacked. Loving souls long to save and be needed, to protect small animals from the scary evils of their existence. Loving souls long to offer shelter, to provide consistency and warmth.

The deer would appreciate comfort and protection; it missed the nurturing it never received. But both hunter and deer knew removing the deer from the wood would be unwise. Left alone she would still manage to grow into a strong force of the forest.

Over time, she found other deer; a herd, a few who accepted her and looked out for her, some of her own kind who she could also look out for. They helped each other the best they could, as a herd will do, though the moment a sound startled them it was always every one for themselves, rather than one for all and all for one. Instinct required this. Survival of the fittest ensued.

To be rescued would have been lovely. To grow up as a pet near a fireplace, cozy and well taken care of, patted and loved like a hound. But then the deer would have been denied the strength gained from stretching her legs. She would have never found her herd, really grown into the doe of the forest she was meant to be. She would have never worked her muscles and grown keen eyesight from fighting for her life every day.

She thrived in the treachery of the forest. She taught herself what was edible and what was not, she watched and learned from the herd what she could when her own experience was lacking. She found her own streams; she frolicked in her own meadows. She found coziness where there seemingly was none. She dodged the bullets of the other hunters and the sharp teeth of the wolves. Time and time again she escaped the terror, found her way to safety some how.

By the end of summer, the deer stood proud. She had lost her spots and earned the right to stand there so tall. She never became the most beautiful – she did not stand out from the forest or her herd; she did not grow to be the strongest – having missed out on important protein from her mother’s milk. But the deer made it. She learned, she grew, and she can protect herself now. She has strong hooves, powerful kicks and she can keep predators at bay.

One day the hunter spotted her in a clearing. She saw him see her, she knew him by his scent. She found a way to both stiffen and relax, comfortable with his presence, but terrified some day soon he wouldn’t lower his gun the same way. There would be mouths to feed, the lover who distracted him that night in the cabin would take priority, something or another would simply be different. They made eye contact, two souls lost in a moment…

She was never rescued, but after all she didn’t need to be – not really. She belongs to the woods.

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My 2013 Life in Literature Meme

November 10, 2013 at 8:47 pm (In So Many Words) (books, lists, literature, Literature in Meme, meme, readers life)

Last year I stumbled across a fun little activity on Becky’s Book Reviews blog. I’m in the mood to do it again today… My 2012 Life in Literature Meme.

Using only books you have read this year (2013), answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.

Describe yourself: The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion

How do you feel: If These Walls Had Ears – Morgan

Describe where you currently live: Eden’s Outcasts – John Matteson

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Over Sea, Under Stone – Cooper

Your favorite form of transportation: Born to Run – McDougall

Your best friend is: The Wild Girls – Murphy

You and your friends are: The Immortal Class – Culley

What is the best advice you have to give: Love is a Choice – Minirth

What’s the weather like: Going Native

You fear: The Distant Hours – Morton

Thought for the day: Don’t Die By Your Own Hands – Holmes

How I would like to die: Surprised by Joy – Lewis

My soul’s present condition: The Evolution of Jane – Cathleen Schine

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I Am… Therefore I Read…

November 10, 2013 at 8:00 pm (In So Many Words) (life, reading, reading life)

Someone once told me I was the “most fascinating dichotomy” he’d ever met. I remember feeling bashful by this statement, not quite understanding what that meant, but nevertheless naked. It’s been an echo in my head for nearly a decade, and I can’t even remember his name. But I have a tendency to mull over echoes and since then I think I’ve pieced together a bit of what he must have noticed.

It’s something that I will always relate back to my heart – both physically and spiritually.

Physically, I have an arrhythmia. It is something that shouldn’t affect me as much as it does except that I identify with it so completely. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but I remember the pain and panic it inflicted in my childhood. It almost always startles me, but I know how to correct it. It is the ever present reality that my heart does not beat in rhythm with anyone else’s and most likely never will. It is the feeling of constantly having to search for a rhythm so much harder than everyone else, whether that be when singing, when running, or when cycling. I do not have an internal clock. I do not keep time or pace. I have to find a pace in others and struggle to match it. This is not a complaint, this is reality. This is what it feels like to be inside my ribcage. The only person who might understand this best (although she obviously won’t remember), is my daughter. For 40 weeks she lived inside that ribcage. Her heartbeat was steady and sure, completely healthy, and mine was obviously off. It was literally breath taking – as in I had to stop to catch my breath – because my heart was off kilter and it was instinctively trrying to match her steady, beautiful rhythm.

Spiritually – To my psyche, this minor detail of my life seems to bleed into everything. I was the girl in the top choirs who could not keep time. I remember my dance partner with his hands on my hip (forceful, not sexually) helping me sway… left… right… left… right… and when I got out of sync the gentle double tap and jerk and the whisper in my ear, “Left!” I am never in tune with the people around me.

I am good at calming myself down and remaining calm when necessary, but am completely startled and thrown off by surprises. I can pass dead bodies in the street after a car accident, see a decapitation, work in a bar, and deal with psychos in downtown ghettos more easily than I can choose something to eat off a menu of a restaurant I was not expecting to visit. I can seamlessly function in chaos, but a surprise from a friend, even if pleasant, can throw my whole day. I am adventurous but rarely impromptu. I am impulsive and simultaneously reserved. I am a sanguine melancholy.

I am often the one at the funeral unable to shed tears, put in charge of something practical. Yet, I’m also the one years later still nostalgic over the deceased when everyone else seems to have ‘gotten over it.’ I am excitable, and therefore perceived as sensitive; but was rarely in relationships prior to my marriage because those romantically interested in me thought I had no heart. I run hot and cold. I either like you instantly, or dismiss you altogether.

I find myself curling up with books most often, I think, because like singing and running and cycling and Kung Fu – there is a rhythm. There is a rhythm of words, a pattern. There is a goal – to understand the author, to live the story, to learn something new, to get to your destination (the far off place in the pages of the book if it is a good one, or simply to the last page if it is a bad one). Again, as I read, I hear the echo of that long lost person… I understand characters so well, and have little understanding of people.

My father in law saw my books once and said, “So you read to escape.” I was mildly offended. No, I thought, I read to accomplish. I read to learn. I read because reading is important. But last night, I realized, in a lot of ways he is right. I read because I have control over the circumstances in which I dive into information. I read to settle my nerves. I read to avoid decisions. I read because in theory it should be easier to be let down by a character than by a person. I read because sharing the friends I meet in books is up to me, I am somewhat in control of the chaos. I read because I can take a few days to figure out what a character means before I am faced with that character again – it’s easy, leave him/her on the nightstand until I’m ready again. You can’t do that with real people. There’s no time. You have to have feelings or not have them immediately, and to master in what degree. You have to decide what everything means immediately. And you have to react accordingly.

Scarlet O’Hara doesn’t care if I think she’s a bitch. It doesn’t matter that I am in love with Captain Wentworth and Howard Roarke, and neither one is saddened, happy, or jealous. Holden Caulfield is unaffected by my disdain for him and what I say about him or to him will not cause him to stumble – or grow. And I can get to know all of them as quickly or slowly as I like. Jay Gatsby is not going anywhere, I can soak up every nuance from now until eternity and not miss a beat.

Not missing a beat is important to someone who misses them all the time.

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Aspects of a Novelist

October 28, 2013 at 12:10 am (In So Many Words, Reviews) (Aspects of the Novel, books, EM Forster, literary criticism, on writing, reviews, writing)

Title: Aspects of the Novel

Author: E.M. Forster

Genre: Literary Criticism

Length: 176 pages

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a very small child. So small that I don’t recall the first revelation or declaration. I simply always knew it was something I wanted to do one day. I also have always enjoyed books. I remember loving to read before I was even any good at it. I remember devouring books before my peers had even mastered their letters. This is not because I was smarter than them, not by a long shot. This is just how much passion I had for the idea of language and the written word.

Naturally, I also love books about writers writing… like Stephen King’s On Writing and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden Letters. I even like authors who get bossy about it like Umberto Eco and E.M. Forster. They deserve to be bossy, as they are brilliant.

I fell in love with E.M. Forster in high school when my favorite English teacher of all time told me to get a copy of Howards End. I remember devouring it almost over night and spending nearly a half hour after school discussing it with him. I remember being utterly blown away by Howards End for reasons I cannot even vaguely recall now, but things amaze you at sixteen for no particular reason at all, it is a habit I have tried to keep as I age too.

My debut as a novelist comes out this week – a novella, actually – called The Bookshop Hotel. I’m about halfway through writing the sequel, a book that will be a full length novel twice as long as the novella, and I’m already paranoid about potential reviews hailing my inferiority as a writer. So, I’m consulting one of my heroes for advice, writerly wisdom from the talented author of Howards End.

As I read Forster’s famous lectures, it is becoming clear to me that I will never be E.M. Forster, John Steinbeck, or even an Audrey Niffenegger! I will never be a best-selling New York Times sensation. I’m ok with that, it was never my intention to be infamous. I have other aspirations.

What I would like to do, though, is to tell a few good stories, make some income for my family, and have the satisfaction of stumbling across my books on shelves in unexpected places. That will be enough for me.

In the mean time, I’ll work as though my goal is to be the next Stephen King (on the prolific level anyway), because even though I am not the most talented, I don’t ever want to be accused of being half-assed. I’d rather be untalented than lazy.

So here I am on a Sunday night perusing Aspects of the Novel, munching on every tidbit, taking notes, wondering if Forster himself would have anything positive to say about my stories because the vital elements to a novel he points out are vital indeed and I’m unsure as to whether my characters can live up to that vitality.

“Forster’s casual and wittily acute guidance… transmutes the dull stuff of He-said and She-said into characters, stories, and intimations of truth,” Jacques Barzun is quoted. Let’s hope he’s right.

Whether it transforms me into something wonderful or not, the book is amazing. Every student of literature, lover of books, or budding author should give this one a go. Then again, I am partial, remember, I fell in love with Forster ages ago.

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Different Kind of Fighter

October 27, 2013 at 6:33 pm (In So Many Words, Reviews) (athletes, bike messengers, books, Critical Mass, cycling, kung fu, reviews, sports, The Immortal Class, Travis Hugh Culley)

Title: The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power

Author: Travis Hugh Culley

Publisher: Random House

Genre: Memoir

Length: 324 pages

My bike club went camping this weekend. I love bikes and I love camping, so it was excruciating knowing I had a pre-Halloween event at my store, bills to pay, and a general inability to leave my husband and child to go on a frivolous trip that would inevitably involve a lot of drinking and riding.

I love books more than anything, and I adore Chris Rogers (the author we had in the store Saturday), but my mind was off in the distance with my new friends – family really – their tents, their bikes, and the dirt and grit far away from my rows and stacks of books.

This isn’t about me whining about not getting to go on a camping trip, though. This is about the discovery I made because of where my mind was not and my body was… in the city, longing for my cycling friends who were partying it up and having a blast.

The stars aligned, the shelves at the store all seemed to point me in one direction, and a copy of The Immortal Class seemed to fall from the heavens.

So overly marketed as to appeal to the counter culture, zine reading crowd, The Immortal Class is one of those small square-shaped trade paperbacks. With phrases like “adrenaline-spiked” and “frenzied rawness” slapped across a black and grey jacket in egg-yolk yellow.

Months after becoming obsessed with the world of cycling and setting goals to really hunker down, figure it out, and join this world – I discovered this weekend why it appeals to my soul so completely.

“[T]he world down here was remarkably organized. Even if it was loud and bombastic, rebellious and unconventional, the people were often fixated on levels of personal status. With one another, messengers were highly cooperative, and yet competing against one another, they were fighters to the bone. It was a tight society where one could promise lasting respect and recognition for what one could offer to the community.” – pg. 230

Of course this appeals to me – this whole world of simultaneous independence and camaraderie. I grew up in a Kung Fu studio. I trained, I relied on muscle memory and instinct. I know so well the feeling of not remembering what it feels like to not be sore somewhere. I built very specific familial relationships that were directly tied to how much blood, sweat, and tears were spilled in each others’ presence.

I still do my work outs. I still teach occasional students. But I am no longer that kind of fighter. I remember when I knew I would never go back in the ring – at least not in the way I used to. It wasn’t the hairline fracture on my sternum. It wasn’t the broken and busted fingers. It wasn’t even the shin injury that twelve years later hasn’t seemed to heal just right and still swells up when it rains. It wasn’t any one thing, really. It was actually before I got my third degree, something I only got because I promised myself I would. It was actually a summer before that when after working out no less than 55-60 hours a week for months on end, after more than a decade in uniform and sash, I realized I was tired – mentally and physically. My mind was ready for something new and my body needed a break from the routine.

I love hitting the streets at night!

I started running more avidly. For a few years I ran 3-5 miles a day. I enjoyed that thoroughly, and I still run periodically. (You may remember a post about Born to Run, a book on barefoot running that kick started the running bug again recently…) But there’s always been something missing from my running – speed. A rush I can’t manufacture on my own two feet, that I used to get in the ring, has been absent. Running didn’t fill the void Kung Fu, my years of being a tournament junkie, and finally the days of bleeding for money had left behind when I said ‘Enough.’

Cycling, though, cycling has suddenly lit up my world and started to warm my soul in a way I haven’t been warmed in a long time. Probably since I fell in love and got married… yes, it’s that good of a rush! Seeing all that I have to learn excites me. Inspecting bruises from crashes and the act of getting to know my bikes (or loaner bikes until I own my own, rather) fills me with the pride that though I am a far, far cry from being any good at this sport – like a white belt dropped in the midst of advanced ninjas – I am at least one step, one bruise, and one fall closer to the perfection I seek.

I have no illusions of grandeur. No presumption that I will be great at this. I’m pushing 30 and my body feels 50, but I’m sure as hell going to try.

Inevitable black eye commencing in one… two… three… GO!

Haven’t felt so myself in a long time.

I dare you to read The Immortal Class and not get the urge to hop on a bike. I dare you. And just remember this: The more you ride, the more you’ll want to ride.

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A Look at My Life This Week

October 13, 2013 at 4:38 am (In So Many Words) (Aristeia, biodiversity, books, cycling, cyclists, Going Native, half price books, landscaping, reviews, Wayne Basta)

I’m almost always cycling in my spare time these days. That sounds like I do it way more than I actually do. I’m a mom, so I live in a limbo of down time that’s not down time. When I am child free, however, I ride my bike.

And here’s a visual update on how that’s going…

Photo taken by Elizabeth. Click to see her blog.

I look forward to Thursdays every week. Taking a load off life on my bicycle with friends is so freeing.

Not that life is so hard… I work with books, which really doesn’t seem like work at all. For instance: today, I met a really cool author named Wayne Basta.

Jason of Grey Gecko Press with Author Wayne Basta.

But of course, while doing all this, I’m still a reader at heart. So, during the signing today between photos and customers and whatnot – I read a book.

Totally unrelated to the really cool science fiction that was happening around me, I read a little book called Going Native: Biodiversity in Our Own Backyard. I’ve been foraging for produce lately, and I found this book really interesting as it featured a section on wild gardens in Texas (Dallas to be more specific) with American BeautyBerry plants.

All about maintaining more natural landscapes with plants native to your area, Going Native encourages the act of relaxing in your garden rather than working in it all the time. Easier said than done, you say… well, there’s also lists of plants for various regions that are recommended with blueprints of how to set it up on certain properties. It’s a neat little book and I enjoyed reading it for the few hours I was hanging out at Half Price Books today.

I found reading this book especially amusing today, because – allow me to come full circle here – my bike club people in that fabulous photo at the top were giving me all sorts of grief Thursday night about being a hippie. Playful grief, of course, as I nibbled – you guessed it – BeautyBerries out of a median we were stranded in while a fellow repaired a flat tire.

Welcome to my life… this week anyway.

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Not So Surprised by the Joy of Lewis

September 18, 2013 at 12:34 pm (In So Many Words, Reviews) (books, c.s.lewis, Christianity, depression, joy, leather bound sets, reviews, Surprised by Joy)

Title: Surprised by Joy

Author: C.S. Lewis

I don’t remember when C.S. Lewis was not a part of my life. Really, I don’t. I am sure at one point in time, possibly even recently, I may have remembered that first moment that I discovered the world beyond the wardrobe – but I can no longer recall it’s newness. I only have the strong sense of having always been to Narnia before. I can only remember various occasions that I visited, like a beloved vacation spot that has become home.

But now I am a grown up, and often when I have a longing for Lewis and his darling brain, I dive into his grown up things. It started with The Screwtape Letters, which I read for the first time in high school or so. Then I moved onto Til We Have Faces, kudos to a fellow named Brian Franklin, who somehow got that into my hands although I don’t recall by what means. Then, finally, most recently, I really started to grow up… and I started reading his nonfiction.

In my mid-twenties I picked up Mere Christianity. Something I wanted to read together as a family. I think I was newly pregnant. I recall being pregnant, maybe, but I don’t recall the big-as-a-house-belly. (After all, when you are pregnant, you are a house – literally – for the tiny human you are growing.) Either way, we read most of it aloud together, I think I ended up finishing the last half on my own, impatient for a conclusion. Now that I’m thinking of it, perhaps I wasn’t pregnant yet at all. Perhaps I just have a hard time imagining life without our little person, even in the memories she wasn’t present for…

Image from Jesse Furey

So now, during a month of what Holly Golightly would refer to as The Mean Reds… during the stress of true adulthood… during moments when my brain (as the brain of the ‘creative’ is wont to do) attempts to dive into a deep melancholy… I have picked up Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life.

Am I suddenly ecstatic? Does Lewis propel me into a sanguine excitement, heart all a flutter with happiness? No. Not even close. But Lewis has reminded me what a lack of joy can really look like. He has reminded me that my joy is never truly gone – even when I don’t feel it.

Sitting here in the wee hours of dawn, because I couldn’t sleep, debating how soon I should brew my coffee while the sun just barely peeks up into the tree branches and a haze of Houston smog, I am with Lewis. I am with him at Wyvern and Chartres. I am with his father. I am with his atheistic sadness and in turn his Christian philosophies. I am with his love for fantasy, satyrs, heroes, and mythologies. I am with him in his distaste for other children and his desire to be alone, except for one good friend.

What I am not with? My own bad mood, which I like to call The Funk. Apparently, Holly, we all have silly names for it and I stopped borrowing yours long ago. Am I surprised that Lewis can scoop me from my mood, at least temporarily, with such ease? No. (Although I admit he had the aid of my daily endorphin dose… the morning kick of pushups and crunches…) Would I do almost anything for the most gorgeous set of leather bound C.S. Lewis books for sale at Good Books in the Woods? Probably, but if I had the money there would probably be a throw down for it in the parking lot between me and my Emily, but at least I know she’d share if she managed to win.

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If These Walls Had Ears

January 13, 2013 at 9:08 am (In So Many Words, Reviews) (501 Holly, biography, books, dwellings, history, home, homeowners, If These Walls Had Ears, James Morgan, journaling, life, memoir, renovation, repairs, restoration, reviews, stories)

Title: If These Walls Had Ears

Author: James Morgan

Publisher: Warner Books

Length: 275 pages

“A house is man’s attempt to stave off the anarchy of nature. Ripping up that floor had allowed a disturbing glimpse into the house’s secret life. It’s more comfortable not to know about such things.” – pg. 88

James Morgan may have been speaking about Billie Murphree’s floor rot from undercover water, but no words used in description of a house have ever hit me harder or rung so true.

Barely two years into owning our own home, my husband ripped up our living room carpet. We had lofty ambitions of laying tile or hardwood floors. We had tiled the living room of a town home once and it had turned out quite nicely for the low cost of $400. Those were the days when we thought home repair and renovation fun. Now, it’s just a necessity. No sooner had the carpet been pulled up, we discovered what we un-lovingly refer to as The Grand Canyon in our foundation.

Upon further inspection, the enormous crack ran from one end of the house to the other, from the outer wall where my rose and herb garden touches our driveway, through the kitchen, under the bar, across the living room, down the hallway, into the bathroom, and right out the outer wall against the side yard where I hope to make a courtyard one day.

We were devastated. We had bought our dream home, except for the master bathroom which will forever irritate and haunt my poor husband, only to find that it wasn’t a dream at all. Our dream home was a wreck, a fixer upper, a money pitt – it kind of still is.

We had $15k worth of foundation repair done at a discounted price – the company is run by a saint – literally, he’s a Gideon, and I’m quite certain he felt sorry for us. He even gave us plenty of time to pay him off and didn’t charge us interest. No sooner had we paid our bill in full, we discovered the breakfast room was now sliding into our back yard and had to have more foundation repair. Our back fence, our back door, my daughter’s window, nothing in this house is safe. It’s fragile, it’s old, it’s exhausting. We had to dig up our front yard and repair plumbing ourselves, we’ve had work done by professionals under both bathrooms.

Oh, and our insurance company is worthless, they paid for exactly nothing.

Yes, Mr. Morgan, a home is man’s attempt to stave off the anarchy of nature. Nature riots in many ways: mud sliding our from under our apparently unstable foundation, a shake slithering up through the crack in our living room, the rain rotting our fence, the winds of Hurricane Ike displacing our other fence and blowing out a window pane in our back door. Our sidewalk to our mail box sunk into our front yard, a storm took down our light post. It never ends. It’s never over.

Despite the issues, despite the debt, despite it possibly being the biggest mistake of our married lives, I’m in love with this house. We’ve been through ups and downs, trials and errors, hell and we’re not quite back, but it’s my home. Technically, it belongs to the bank, but we live under the illusion that it’s ours, and the illusion has a safe feeling to it, until the next time something breaks…

“In a house you never can tell where the next trouble will erupt. A door knob will suddenly come off in your hand. A heating duct in the belly of the house will lose a screw and pop out of its fitting. Even if you think you know the trouble spots, you’ll be taken by surprise. A piece of upstairs trim will swell up and warp, and the next thing you know, the rain will be leaking in downstairs and two walls away.” – pg. 109

Still, for whatever reason, everyone loves old houses. I remember when we were house hunting I specifically asked for a house in an older neighborhood surrounded by trees. “Nothing newer than the ’80’s,” I told my realtor, “No cookie cutter neighborhoods.” “Why, oh Why?!” I inevitably cursed later when we had to shave down parts of our interior doors so we could open and close them because the house had shifted yet again. “Why?!” we yelled when a brick just came out of our stoop, just slipped right out from under our door and lay across the porch where a welcome mat should have been. “Why?!” we screamed when a board from our deck in front of the garage door collapsed.

Because like Morgan says,

“Old houses look like home to us. They appeal not to our practical side but to whatever romantic part of us traffics in hopes and dreams, or wallows in nostalgia. They’re flirts, old houses. They get painted up real pretty – the way this house was when I first saw it – and they show off a lot of front porch and invite you in for a little French dooring, and the next thing you know, they’ve snared another sucker.” – pg. 180

Morgan’s book is endearing, nostalgic, and beautiful. It speaks to home owners, future home owners, and anyone who has ever fallen in love with a building of any kind. If These Walls Had Ears really speaks to my heart. There’s even an Andi that shows up briefly and takes part in 501 Holly’s biography. It makes you hope that in another fifty or so years someone will write a sequel to this old house’s life story.

The only part I didn’t like, despite a very beautiful quote in it, was the epilogue which summed up the lives (or the divorces and deaths, rather) of all the people who once lived in 501 Holly. It was depressing to say the least.

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