The Cabin and Life Itself
When a house inhabits a soul. And what to do about it.
Amish men built the cabin for us in 2004. I’d show up to watch them work. They’d leave their tall hats on the front stoop. The cabin is a sturdy place of wood and siding and a roof designed to last 50 years. It’s on five acres in Adams County, where flat farm fields give way to the rolling shoulders of Appalachia. Hills erupt there.
A field of wildflowers once dominated the view from the front door of the cabin. Over the years, that scene has yielded to a thick stand of fast-growing cedars, hiding the cabin from the dirt road a few hundred yards away. Nobody can see you at the cabin, if you choose not to be seen.
Out back, the land slopes steeply into a forest. If you’re inside the cabin looking out the back window, the cabin seems to float in the trees.
The deck crosses the entire back of the place, offering a panoramic view of woods, eagles, buzzards, deer and the occasional flock of wild turkeys. This time of year, when the sun is on its game and angling through the yellow woods, the whole scene glows.
This is where I am now, on this deck, admiring the glow.
*
Life is good. But not forever. The tease of getting older is, the world gives us more opportunities just as time starts taking them away. Time’s once-blooming window starts to close just as we’re ready to fling it wide open. I’m thinking we should start working at 62, not 22. Give life our best effort while our bodies and minds are most fully up to the task. That seems fair.
It doesn’t work that way, though. So I’m thinking of selling the cabin.
We don’t use it enough now. The cabin has gone from an escape to an extravagance. Structures in the woods don’t maintain themselves and I am not Johnny Toolbelt. Stuff that used to be a pleasure out there — cutting grass, removing small trees, chopping wood, all the manly stuff I have little talent for — has become work.
My wife won’t go. Too buggy, she says. Not sufficiently climate-controlled. J. Thinwallet refuses to pay big utility bills, even though the place is all of 800 square feet. As a result, the cabin can be less hospitable than our palatial Cincinnati estate. It’s a luxury. Retirees don’t necessarily have the means for luxuries, or would prefer to spend those means on something else.
Practical Man looks at the numbers. Wistful Man remembers the joy moments. The problem is, I am both. I see both. But even more, the issue is this, and it is existential:
The act of Letting Go.
When you’re 34, you don’t see things that way. Letting Go is someone else’s thinking. I’m building something here. When you’re 44 and 54, you’re too damned busy to see anything but straight ahead. When you’re 64, maybe you begin to change. The world is still a big place. But at 64, your own world gets smaller every day. Wistful Man sees selling the cabin as a capitulation to 64.
The kids hiked the old logging roads at the cabin. The dog romped in their wake. We had Thanksgiving there, we spent many a New Year’s Eve watching the fire at midnight, if we made it to midnight. The deck was and is an irreplaceable hymn to the silence. At the cabin almost nothing is required of me but my presence.
Places have a habit of burrowing into me. It’s just a house. Well no, it’s not. Lives happened there. The cabin inhabits my soul. If I sell it, a big part of my life goes, too.
So. . . what?
When I’m here: Sell it.
When I’m there: Are you kidding me?
I should sell it. I don’t know if I can.
*
The simple solution, as offered by my son and supported by my wife: Get an exterminator under contract, keep the place more like a lived-in home and vow to spend more time out there. Enjoy it the way we used to.
You love it, right? Kelly said.
And yet. . .
In the wormhole of my head, it’s not that simple. It’s an emotional, financial, melancholic stew. Sounds crazy, yes. But not if you’re living it.
The cabin is built to last. I am not. What to do about that is the thing.
*
In the middle-distance, halfway down the slope, the sky is filled with poplars, cedars and pin oaks. The redbuds move in the steady breeze that delivers autumn into winter. The world sways. I can feel it. Even when the air is still.
Reading this today brought back memories of when my mother finally sold my parents home, a couple of years after my father's passing in 2011.
Much like you, it was the memories of the homestead which had me conflicted on her selling it. "That's the tree where I learned how to climb trees." "That's the creek bed I collected rocks from." "That's the corner of the back sidewalk I chipped off with the Craftsman lawnmower." "That's the septic tank cover we used as home plate for Wiffleball."
I remember the night before the closing, I stopped by one last time and walked through the empty house and the property. Bawled my eyes out, thinking of all the firsts and all the memories. Luckily, found my father's old American Bowling Congress 700 Series patch he earned at Western Bowl, tucked away in a nook in the basement, during that last stroll down memory lane. Took that with me, obviously.
After my bawling and on the car ride home to our place, my wife asked me a simple question: "Did your parents' house serve its purpose for your family?" My answer was unequivocally "Yes." It did. It gave us the memories. It gave us the firsts. What occurred in it taught us three kids how to be good human beings.
It served its purpose, honorably, and with some of the issues my mother would have been facing had she kept the house and 8 acre property, it made the sale no less emotional, but much more digestible. And, it ended up becoming a part of another family's life, where memories, events and more will occur for them.
Which brings me to the question I was asked by my wife, and I humbly suggest you ask yourself, Paul ... did the Adams County homestead serve its purpose for the Daugherty family? Or is there still life left in the beautiful cabin and more purpose in it?
Answer that question, and you've got the answer to your conundrum. That answer might soothe the heart, or it might make it ache. But if you can say the cabin served its purpose, honorably, for your family, there's no shame in selling and letting another family create some memories of their own.
The best of luck to you on this, Paul, and thank you for the stirring piece today, and every day.
The Adams County place was always your getaway. Not the family's. It fed something in your soul. Probably still does even if maintenance, which you have plenty of time for now, nags at you. Sometimes just the drive out there sufficed. I suspect you spent time with favorite ghosts out there.
Call an exterminator. winterize such as is necessary, and enjoy whatever else is going on. Paul McCartney sang about turning 64 and now the sucker is 80. Fall always dumps its light stealing ways on you hard. It is just that time again. Very enjoyable piece. I either didn't know or forgot that the cabin was custom built.