Home is Where the Scraper Is

I come from a pretty small family. My mother and father each only had one sibling. My maternal grandmother was an only child. My paternal grandfather was one of just two in the family. My dad's mom came from the biggest bunch, and there were only 5 of them in all. You know what this means, don't you? It means that I cannot expect a big inheritance check from some long-lost great aunt. That is why I have been outside scraping my house today rather than just hiring someone to do it for me. Well, that, and because I really do love this old place, and I know you would too.

I live in an old one-room schoolhouse smack dab in the middle of old-order Amish territory. There is a field that surrounds my house on two sides. The other two sides are flanked by dusty gravel roads, each of which is bordered by lovely pastures  with grazing, wide-eyed cows. The sky above is always big, whether it's filled with fluffy clouds or surging storms, and the breezes are never cooler or the stars ever more abundant than they are in my side yard. We have a swingset there, complete with a two-seater that I like to lay back in and watch the world go by. It's right next to our hen house (former outhouse) and the chickens will gather and cluck conversationally in my general direction when I sit there. It's a great place to pass an hour or two, or even a whole afternoon. Our yard has hideouts around the LP tank and in the overgrown bushes. It has sunny expanses to play ball in, a patch of cement to draw on with sidewalk chalk, shady corners to lie in, and a pasture complete with tall grass, Maples to climb, and a mulberry tree you can stand at for hours and get increasingly purple, full, and happy with every passing minute.

And, that's just the yard. The house itself is, basically,  a 30' by 30' square, except that it has a 12' by 8' bell tower tacked on to the south side. When you come in through the blue door in the bell tower, you are taking a step back in time. This is where almost 50 years' of school children started and ended their industrious days, and eagerly went out and came in from recess. You can go downstairs (to your left, and past a large, sunny window), or upstairs (to your right, and also past a large, sunny window.) When this house was a school, the basement was mostly just a place to house the boiler, coal hopper, and other mechanical equipment. There was a ping pong table for the kids to play on if it was too wet to go outside, but not much else. Today the basement has a family room, two bedrooms, and a combination bathroom/laundry room. Despite the many windows, it is cool and shady, and pleasant down there. It has a sense of stillness that I think comes from it having been largely forgotten by the kids all those school years ago.

Upstairs, however, is where the magic happens. The steps from the entryway still creak and groan in a satisfying and familiar fashion, just as I am told they did from the beginning of this old school. Up the stairs and through the doorway you find yourself in a great room, and I mean that in both senses of the word. Three-fourths of the 900 square feet on that floor are all open, including our dining room, our kitchen, and our living room. The ceilings, which are sixteen feet tall, are paneled in pine. There are three big skylights and eight enormous windows - enough to let in that giant sky and all the lovely breezes and stars. The old wood floors and plaster walls may be a different color than they were back then, but they still echo the whispers and recitations from years gone by. It's hard to explain, exactly, but I know that this old schoolhouse is happy. It was loved and a part of something sacred and important for almost a half a century. I guess you could say it still is. What we are doing here - raising our children and living out, the the fullest, the act of being a family - is also sacred and important work, and we couldn't ask for a better backdrop for it.

See - I told you you'd love it. Everyone who comes here falls in love with this happy schoolhouse. Maybe it's the architectural uniqueness - the fact that it's not like every other house these days. Maybe it's because of its historical importance. After all, there has been a schoolhouse on this site continuously since 1864 (though this is the second building), and this was the last public one-room schoolhouse in Iowa to close, maybe even one of the last in the nation. Maybe you, like me, love this place because it is a chance to slow the rhythm of life and fall in pace with a simpler time and era. Maybe it is the memories, or the promises of what's yet to come in this home that make it so lovable. I can't quite pinpoint my favorite thing about this house because there is so very much to love about it. Enough, in fact, that I'm willing to dangle precariously off ladders, wear the ends of my fingers off with sandpaper and scrapers, get bumped and bruised and banged up, and even battle the occasional nest of yellow jackets just to ensure that it will be around for another generation to enjoy as well. Now that you've fallen in love with it, feel free to join me. I'll be the one clinging to the south side, scraper in hand. :)