An Old House Goodbye
by Christine M. Mosley

Years before I met him, my husband had visited a small town about two hours north of New York City in the beautiful Hudson River Valley. When he eventually brought me along, I was fascinated by the lost-in-time feeling Rhinebeck village possessed, and I was hooked. It took two more years, however, before I finally gave in and agreed to see a real estate agent in town. "You may want to take a look at this one just a few blocks from here," said agent Don and handed me the listing. On it was a picture of a boxy, olive green house with two front doors. "Turn-of-the-century, I think, set up as apartments now." As he pulled up in front of it, I felt myself letting go of the life I had known... I knew right then and there that this was it.

The front porch was wide and imposing, and seemed to form a wrap-around welcome mat for us as we climbed the steps. It was a most unusual house, in a style I had never seen before: a late 19th-century "Mirror Victorian" as Don called it. There, just as in the picture, were the two front doors. "The house has two sides, y'know," he said, "so we'll see the vacant side first." The oak front door was over nine feet high with ornate hardware, beveled glass insert and the original turnkey doorbell. Once through it, my gaze turned toward the parlor and its gigantic windows, all three of them, which formed the hallmark Queen Anne bay.

I couldn't wait to see the rest. My husband and I started up the stairs to the second floor. I could feel his creative energy hitting me like a mallet as we went from room to room: the scope of what we were seeing was hard to take in all at once. Every one of the rooms had the same Queen Anne windows; all the trim was wide and fluted, topped with the bull's eye medallion so indicative of the house's Victorian roots. And the attic was something else again: a 14-foot ceiling that peaked in the center, where a hatch covered the entrance to the widow's walk and a view that took your breath away. Looking over the treetops and down over the streetscape, with our hair blowing in our faces and our heads filled with amazement, Don said, "Want to see the other house now?"

Through the left front door, a duplicate of the other one, were the apartments that Don had mentioned earlier, one on the first floor, one on the second, the rooms configured exactly like the right side, only reversed. While the friendly owner gave us a brief history of her tenure, I tried to focus on her conversation, but I couldn't; ideas, colors, and a brand new life were circling through my mind. Three months later, the moving van departed from our split level house and we left behind the lives we had known in New Jersey.

The challenge of our lives was about to begin. Every day was an adventure in the house, and our plans to convert it to a Bed and Breakfast were beginning to take shape. Seven months of "un-muddling" involved returning the "apartment" side of the house to its original state as a single-family, eight-room dwelling. This would house the B&B. Walls of paneling and sheetrock came down, revealing the ghosts of the 1889 floor plan. We hung period wallpapers that enhanced the historic feel of the building, added colors, fabrics and accessories and made endless trips to home improvement stores at all hours of the day and night. In May of 1998, with a nearly empty bank account, we finally opened the Sleeping Beauty Bed and Breakfast.

For the next seven years we worried during slow seasons and rejoiced during lucrative summers, and through all of it our house was the consummate host. We never once wanted to be anywhere else but where we were, living in this house and sharing it with the family and the world.

Soon we turn the Sleeping Beauty over to a young couple, the next stewards of the property. With children growing up, and health challenges to face, we made the extraordinarily difficult decision to move on. None of the family took it very well. Time, though, has helped us through these difficult months, along with the happiness of our buyers, and I see in their faces the same brightness and enthusiasm of spirit we had nine years ago, and still have. When I walk around the house with them, my emotions sometimes get the best of me, but they are kind enough to understand and let me have my tearful moments. I have asked myself a hundred times how I say goodbye to the greatest teacher I ever had, how I begin to express what this house has taught me every day for the last nine years, how I say goodbye to guests from all over the world, strangers who have laughed and dined right here in our home, and to the magical interaction between them I have witnessed all these years.

Months of reflection have finally brought me answers to those hard questions, and the answers are where they always were; right here in this boxy, olive green Mirror Victorian with the two front doors. I know now we were stewards all along, caretakers of this piece of history, and my sadness has been replaced with an overwhelming gratitude, a peaceful thankfulness for the unbelievable opportunity I was given nine years ago. This house opened up a whole new world to me, a world of possibilities and hands-on experience; it brought out abilities in me I didn't know I had. My children gained a respect for what came before them, reveled in the enveloping sanctuary that only an old house can provide, and they take with them the memories of not only a family home, but the appreciation of a 19th-century structure that served a 21st-century family so well. These houses remain standing for a reason, I've come to realize, not only to be admired and treasured, but to be our teachers, our living illustrators of history that can live on long past our tenure here.

What has this old house taught me? It made me see what perseverance can accomplish. It made me see that dreams do come true, and that in caring for that old house comes a reward far greater than we expect or imagine. I say goodbye to my old house, happy in the knowledge that my dream of a young family loving it as I do will come true, and that once again, the past lives on.