By Dr. Summer Beattie | Commonly seen as a wall quote, there is some truth to the statement. I think the opposite is true as well: Home – it tells your story….. If you are at all interested in history – the people, places and events that shared your piece of earth, only in another slice of time, then you know exactly what I mean.
We bought our home in Juneau just a few years ago. It was not brand new construction. It had a history. A coast guard family was moving out, and they had bought it from another family who had of course bought it from yet another family. This house has a lineage of families, and while I’ve only begun to discover some of its stories….. oh if these walls could talk! Well, actually, they do. Don’t worry; no ghosts whispering in the night (yet). Before we painted, on the wall next to the bathroom were the faded pencil and pen lines marking the ever changing heights, name and ages of children who had grown up in this house. I had already painted a good portion of the walls before I found this tribute to the lives the house once shared or I might not have painted over it. To those of you less sentimental, I’m sure that seems crazy. I paused and had to take a moment to share my find with someone else. Acknowledging with some sadness, that someday, as I marked my own children’s growth (maybe in that same place) someone after me would also erase their precious mile markers with paint as I was about to do.
Other stories I’ve had a good laugh over. One had almost faded completely away on its own and I might not have discovered it, had a former owner not asked me if their “story” was still there. At some point the family who had the home prior to the one we purchased it from decided one of the toilets just had too much condensation, so her father lined the inside with styrofoam to help regulate the temperature. Before he did though, he took a black permanent marker and drew a caricature of stick figures to represent each member of the family. Years and years of flushing had left only the faintest remnant of his original artwork.
Not all stories this house has told have been touching or funny…. Like the stench that we started noticing soon after we moved in. That story included dogs who had repeatedly urinated on the laminate flooring of the living room and hallway, soaking into the attached pad. Tearing that all out revealed the original cork flooring which we sanded the Kilz paint from (a saving grace as it kept the urine from soaking in to the cork!) and are planning to eventually re-finish. I’m sure there is an interesting story behind the cork as well.
When we one day move out or sell this house it will carry new tell-tale signs of who we were in this home. I hope the blood, sweat and tears we are putting into the fixing of this old home will mean they have to and want to do less work to it. I hope the marks we leave and the stories they tell make the next residents smile and laugh as much as we have making them.
I’d love to hear some of the stories your homes have told….. please share on the Southeast Alaska Living website or facebook page.
Dr. Summer Beattie, ND is a graduate of Bastyr University. She has over 8 years experience as a Naturopathic Doctor specializing in women’s health with an emphasis on environmental medicine. Having served two terms on the board of directors for the Washington Association of Naturopathic Physicians, she has also worked in the medical aesthetics field since 2008. You can reach her at onehealingcenter@gmail.com or
907-209-4611.