Layers of Memories - Tappahannock VA 6-12-10

Tappahannock, Virginia

One of the interesting things about renovating an old house is the opportunity to indulge in a bit of archeology. Humans tend to live their histories in layers. Archeologists digging down through layers of earth, pottery shards, and ash in mounds known as tells are sometimes able to reconstruct the history of entire civilizations. It seems we do the same thing within our residential structures.

Peeling down ten layers of paint and six layers of floor covering reveal prevailing tastes over many decades, even revealing periods of prosperity. One layer of asphalt tile laid down in 1938 was still in place, still in view for the next sixty three years. In 2001 just before Christmas it was covered over with a layer of linoleum. A stray front page from a newspaper announced big doings in Iraq and insured a very recent date for the laying of the last three layers of flooring. I had guessed the middle layers to be much older that the newspaper proved them to be. A 1999 dime embedded in the second layer proved the flooring to be much newer than initially thought. It was a bit like doing radio-carbon dating. I did wonder why one floor was good enough for sixty three years and why four more floors were put down in a mere nine years. I wonder what this says about our culture. Do our floors reveal more about our discontent with things as they are than we want to admit? Those floors were all in good condition when we pulled them up.

Another interesting form of ‘layering’ comes with school reunions. Schools will often have reunions at five year intervals. Classes convene in the summer to see who has gained weight, lost hair, married, become famous, ad infinitum. Each class has its station in history, anchored with its favorite music of the era, current fashions, cultural challenges, even great movies that have become icons of the day. It’s great fun to remember shared history, to see how the class nerd became CEO of a Fortune 500. Poignant is the absence of those who got a short straw in life and succumbed to medical misfortunes or quirks of fate.

What is true of both ancient archeology, recent explorations under the kitchen floors, and cultural anthropology at class reunions, are the realities of life’s seasons. We have those seasons when prosperity and health are granted. At other times life is a challenge.

Today I was granted invitation to the summer reunion of a prestigious girl’s boarding school. Festive tents were set up on the riverfront lawns where we plowed through mountains of blue crabs harvested out of Chesapeake Bay. At sunset we explored layers of years and rejoiced at our good fortune in life. For those able to spend five years in this school with its lavish field trips overseas suggests they had been granted a privileged station in life. For me to spend the day mining the history of an old house and my evening mining a pile of blue crabs suggests I have been granted a privileged station in life.