We bought a librarian’s house.
It has all the orderly marks you’d expect of a home owned by a Professor of Library Science who lived to be 101.
She left boxes of neatly stacked Tupperware lids, nail-filled Jif cans all in a row, vintage house slippers in their original box, and stacks of university phone books categorized by the year (1950-1985). I could go on.
We’ve learned from neighbors that she did amazing things in her lifetime, like going back to school after her husband died young of lung cancer. And she left some drool-worthy vintage items, like an immaculate 1959 Rover gas range that still works. But what I am most fascinated by and most privileged to get to do, is study her home life— the bits no one saw, or if they did—wouldn’t care about.
I get to see her Tupperware. Her ordinary life, that is no more.
It’s holy work— shifting through these dust covered items, work that’s made me crack open the book of Ecclesiastes more than once.
I threw her mismatched Tupperware in the roll-off dumpster in our drive and was surprised by the mist in my eyes. I’m throwing away her life. And soon enough someone is going to throw out mine too. I was struck by the brevity of it all.
My life will be reduced to mismatched Tupperware, pilfered by unfamiliar hands.
After a day of title grabbing and name dropping— everyone comes home to their phone books and Jif cans full of nails, just as Ms. Librarian did. We exhale the day thus far and breath in our normal slipper-wearing life. We lay our heads on a familiar scent and shape of a beloved pillow and wake up to a very un-instagramable coffee routine.
This is life. This is life. It’s beautiful.
Female feet have walked up and down every inch of this house as I now begin to. I pick up where she left off—striving to answer, just as she did, one very important question.
How do I bottle up what’s most important in life and live it within these 1,600sq ft?
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