A ruin in our backyard

I have realized that there is a ruin less than a few hundred feet from where I type this in our house.

It's not fabulous and extensive, and doesn't hold much if any historic importance. But it is a ruin, just the same.

Before we built this house in which I sit and write, we lived in an old house which occupied a spot just down the hill. It was the house which was here when we bought the property. It had charm, as an old colonial-style structure often will, but that was about it as far as its appeal went. Bad insulation, inefficient plumbing, a dark and gloomy kitchen, and various design oddities and structural quirks made it clear to us that this was not a house in which we could live for long and be comfortable.

During the three or four years we lived there, we had almost completely rebuilt the large barn which stood next to it, mostly for my use as an art studio and a place to store and service my motorcycles, and have the wood shop that I had always dreamed of. During that process, we saw what could be done with new construction, and started thinking that we would either do something similar with the house, or tear it down and build from scratch.

We chose the latter option, and ended up clearing a house-sized area on the heavily-wooded knoll behind the old house. When the new house was completed and we moved in, that old house was subsequently torn down -- albeit torn down CAREFULLY, as there were original beams and such which were valuable enough for the company that did the demolition to keep and reuse as the framework for a new house on another lot in another town.

Within months, there was virtually no sign that a house had stood there… except for one thing.

While we lived in that house, we thought it would be nice to expand the tiny preexisting patio area off of the kitchen. We had a nice, two-tiered stone wall built around two sides of it, as well as a circular stone planter for a small tree in the middle. And when the house was taken down, we saw no reason to destroy the patio -- in fact, we thought it might turn out to be a nice place to sit in the sun and enjoy the various plantings, even though we had the new house up on the hill.

Well, that was the idea, and we did spend some time on the old patio, but it quickly became apparent that we wouldn't be using it very often. So it has sat there, for almost twenty years, with very little in the way of upkeep. The plantings are overgrown, the bench weathered and rusting, and tall weeds grow between the slate paving stones, which are slowly being covered with lichens. Occasionally, in the summer, I run the mower over the patio to keep the tallest of the weeds down.

It is, in essence, a ruin.

And while not as elaborate as some ruins, this one affects me in similar fashion -- perhaps even more so in some ways, because when I go down there and sit on the old bench, I contemplate the passing of time, and even of a way of life for us which is no longer. Most of the time we spent out there, when the old house still stood, was with our daughter when she was little. We had her small wading pool there, and played with her dolls and other toys either on that patio or nearby, on the lawn or in the shade of the lilac bushes. I remember my mother chasing our little daughter around there, grandmother laughing and granddaughter shrieking happily.

Now my mother doesn't run, but moves slowly with a walker… and my daughter is about to turn twenty-two and lives three thousand miles away, on the other side of the country.

There is more than a slight hint of melancholy here. -- PL