Gifts

We live in an old house. It' a Victorian-- not the gingerbread variety, but the simple farmhouse variety. It was built in 1900, and has seen a lot, and not all good, in those 109 years. When it came on the market two years ago, we were living quite happily in a 1940 Bungalow, but there was something about this house that compelled us to take a look. While it had a lot of good things going for it, the bad things made us say "not for us," and "too much work." This house was not going to give up so easily though. It kept forcing its way into our thoughts. We started to think more and more about what we could do to fix it up, and what a really incredible place it could be once again. We began to see that by saving this house, we could save a piece of the history of this town. The house didn't care what our motives were. It was grateful to be loved once again, and have owners who didn't write on the walls with markers, or shoot BB's into those same walls, or park cars in the front yard. As we began to fix things up, the house began to thank us. The first year we found a gold wedding ring while putting in a flower bed. The second year, while cleaning out a pipe, we found a dime from 1869. While having this house is a gift in itself, we wonder....What will it offer us in the years to come?