My Favorite Place

My favorite place is my mom and dad's house, when it stands in silence with no one else in it. The house is a two story log cabin nestled between a set of trees. The front yard faces a forest of pine trees that keep the sunlight at bay from reaching the undergrowth of its densely populated area. The back yard is empty of all but one Japanese maple that stands close to the house. This slight, sunny patch of yard quickly slopes down into a hollow that is laden with hardwood trees, big-leaf magnolia trees, dogwoods and cedars.

These trees help to overshadow a twisting grassy pathway that leads down to the creek, about fifty-yards behind the house. This pathway is all that is left from an old wagon trail that was used to let people and their livestock have access to fresh water. Mom once told me of a sad story involving the old road and some of its thirsty travelers. Two small children of a family of wagon goers were playing alongside the high dirt banks of the road, ultimately loosening up the dirt in a spot in the curve of the bank. There was a cave-in and by the time the other child had clawed his way free of the dirt and alerted the family, it was too late to save the child that had been left buried under the collapsed bank. I often walk that old road, looking at the bank and recalling the story. It is heartbreaking to picture the mother and father who must have cried in agony as they were holding the lifeless body of their child tightly to their chests.

This road is littered with old horseshoes, nails, glassware, pottery and some oyster shells that dad has been dumping in truck loads along its sides and pathway for many years now. I know that the shells were just randomly dumped there and pressed into the bank. But, I like to think that they are there now to strengthen the bank and keeping it from ever collapsing again.

The house is interesting enough when mom and dad are home. When they are, the food is wonderful, the coffee is perfect, and we laugh and talk well into the night. My children will sometimes show up to get their share of comfort food, and sometimes just for comforting hugs and good advice. I and my husband stop by for the food and the company, and to give mom and dad our company in return. Even in their later years, mom and dad still like to entertain, and this is how we give back to them.

The L-shaped porch is full of odds and ends and it would take a full day of just sitting on the porch swing, or the comfortable padded chaise lounge, to see and take in everything hanging on the outside walls. There are countless deer antlers, bull horns, nibbled on by the squirrels, antique signs, farm tool implements, churns filled to overflowing capacity with flowers and ivy. Then there are the eclectic tables and chairs that are spaced out, some against the wall others against the porch railings, placed there as if to aid in the feeling of wandering down back into history.

Dad built up two rounded out flower gardens that hold various wild flowers, ivies, gardenia and night jasmine, and one tough old rubber tree. The climbing roses, he trained to go over the arbor he built at the steps of the front porch, can become unbelievably heavy with scent. The lattice-sided arbor that spans eight-feet out from the extra long wide steps of the porch, holds a couple of white iron tables and chairs. These are set off by the flagstones that are embedded into the earth throughout the arbor, which leads to a gate made out of an old iron bedpost. Sitting there, with the smells of the roses, the sounds of the carpenter bees and honey bees zooming about, and sound of the creek running in the background, it could have easily became my favorite spot of all. But all this runs a close second to the cozy rooms just inside the heavily glass leaded front door.

For all the happiness gotten from enjoying the food and good company, and the cool of the porches and arbor, my favorite place is mom and dad's house when silence is your only company. The smell of the house is fresher with their recent parting on trips back to Louisiana, and the ticking of old clocks is comforting. You can almost feel the presence of past ghost that have elected to linger with their dear old possessions that fill up every room of the house, as if still not willing to relinquish them to the next owners.

Every corner of the house is full of antique furnishings, cabinets and old pie safes. You could not take a look at a wall in any room of that house, and be absolutely certain that the wall was flat logs, oak, painted or wallpapered, there is just too much else to be seen on them. They are peppered with old lithograph pictures, their landscapes framed in overly carved gilded frames, ceramic plates and old soup tureen lids, in all shapes and sizes, hung in delightful patterns. The old clocks, most of them still chiming in perfect unison, hang in the hallways and in the dining room, squeezed between other smaller clocks and various sized paintings. The galley-styled kitchen is covered up with hanging pots, displays of kitchen tools of old, and enamel coffeepots and decorative old glassware.

In some parts of the house, like the bathroom, you could almost feel if you had truly stepping back into time. Each of the three bathrooms, are full of everything that one would expect to find in use over a hundred years ago. I especially love the bathroom off from the first story bedroom. It features a claw foot top, a Victorian vanity, and right above the bathtub is a beautiful stain glass window. The many other stain glass windows in the house are beautiful and each one gives their rooms a deeper sense of the ambience of the past.

Each room's old wall furnaces still work; the heating bricks are beautiful when they are lit, and the furnace walls are decorative and interesting to look at. The subtle differences of the furnaces tend to add more character to the house. They also aid in warming up the cold wooden floors.

The coolness of the arbor is as inviting as the warmness of the living room when the woodstove is emitting the heat of a welcoming fire. It is right here, in this place, on the old cushiony couch, watching the flames dance inside the woodstove, and hearing the roaring of the smoke being push up and out from its old stovepipe, that I am the most comfortable in. This spot is my haven. Here, the house says to me, "Stay, be warm, you are safe, close your eyes." I do not usually ever have the chance to go to sleep while sitting in front of the fire. When dad, who is the chief fire starter, hears mom talking about how hot it has suddenly gotten in the house, the heavy doors of the woodstove are shut.

If I ever get a chance to get into the backroom, I usually make my way to one of the antique tiger oak high-mattress beds. The softness of the pillow top covers just rises up around you, and the beds smell like lemons and lavender all at the same time. The snowy white down covers is like being taken under wings of a giant mother bird. I have never slept as fitfully in any other bed, than in those beds. Given this, this room would be ultimately hard to sleep in if it was not for the over-sized boxed window fan that draws the air in with a comforting hum into the room.

This room really was not made to become a bedroom; it is too large, with a couch and table and chairs, and a roll-top desk in competition for space. It was actually the back porch at one time. On some occasions when I could get away from the company and catch a nap in one of the beds in the room, I have often fallen asleep hearing the muffled sounds of mom or dad washing dishes or cooking something on the stove. The kitchen window was kept in place and is perfectly centered between the two beds, and still looks out over the yard, through the room's expansive plate glass windows.

The children have decided to keep the house just the way it is, long after mom and dad have passed away. We cannot think of a better tribute to the memory of mom and dad, than by keeping their memory alive in the leaving of every room as it is.

The house is not a perfect magazine showcase house, but it is a house filled with things loved and things used, each item having a set purpose and use. I would hope that as I close my own eyes in death one day that the house will still be like it is right this minute. Then I could, just once more, in its silence, say good-bye to my favorite place ever to be.