The day we moved into the house, we found the blueprints on the mantle. The neat pile had been left for us by the former owners, the ones who said, This house has good karma. Five weary, yellowed scrolls. We unfurled them one by one, revealing the original plans for the bungalow when it was built in 1926.
This is our third home. It’s not the oldest (our first will likely always have that honor, having been built in 1831) and not the youngest (our SoBro bungalow was four years younger), but it’s the first for which we’ve had these artifacts. Something about having these plans make ownership feel more serious, more like stewardship. We’re just the fifth owners, and we’ll likely still live here when the house turns one hundred.
I’m so grateful for those four owners who tucked these brittle papers away into a safe place, and found it right to leave these with the house when their time in it ended. It is because of their stewardship that I know to call the storage room in the basement the “fruit bin.” I love this little detail – it feels like a secret I’m not supposed to know, something I’ve been let in on.
Now it’s or turn to be the caretakers, the keepers of the fruit bin.
This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox
Prompt: “Let’s Get Physical. Time to go through your (actual) desktop, junk drawer, or coat pockets and share an artifact from your past. A half-torn ticket stub, once-washed receipt, coffee-stained map, anything in a frame: it’s all fair game. What springs to mind from your artifact? The smells, sights, and sounds? A specific feeling? Hold it in your hand, close your eyes, and go back in time to a moment.”