Love Letter to a Hundred-Year-Old House

Celebrating twenty years together

Dear Chickadee Cottage,

I hope you don’t mind me using the old name we gave you years ago. It doesn’t quite fit you the way it did back when you were our cozy little 800-square-foot, 2-bedroom/1-bath family home. Don’t get me wrong—even though we’ve since added on another bedroom and bathroom, you’re still cozy! It’s just that “cottage” doesn’t seem like quite the right word anymore, but I’m not sure what does. For a while we joked about changing your name to “Chickadee Manor,” but that never stuck. 

Anyway! I’m writing to you because we’re celebrating a milestone: B and I moved in exactly twenty years ago. I can’t think of a better occasion to celebrate your steady, comforting presence in our lives. I don’t think I tell you enough just how much I appreciate you—I’m totally guilty of comparing you to bigger/classier homes and thinking maybe ours isn’t enough, but at the same time feeling weirdly embarrassed that we have (relatively) so much. Sometimes I wonder if you sense that inner conflict/self-consciousness, so this love letter is in part an apology, too. Because the bottom line is that you’re perfect for us, and we’re so very grateful for you.

The side of the house shortly after we moved in back in 2004, with flowering cherry tree, pond ringed by stones, and a second-floor deck with sloping roof

I still feel incredibly lucky that we found each other. Do you remember that first time B and I came to see you? We were so young, in our early twenties. I had just secured a full-time job after graduating college and was eager to get the home-buying train out of the station. I knew we probably wouldn’t be approved for a loan once I started grad school in the fall and began working less, so we decided to go for it. Even though we were a little nervous about affording the mortgage, we had various privileges working in our favor, including an aunt who was a loan officer and helped us secure a home loan with good terms. We were also good at living on meager incomes, so I figured we’d be fine, as long as we stayed under our budget of $225K.

The house hunt was discouraging at first. Most of the homes in our price range were fixer-uppers, and we just weren’t able to take on the expenses and stress of renovating. We wanted something that was move-in ready. This was not easy to come by on our budget, though!

One day, our realtors convinced us to go to an open house in the South Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Beach. From the moment I first walked through your front door, I was in love. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. There was something about you that felt so different from the other places we’d seen. I could tell that you had been well cared for. Your walls were colorfully painted, your hardwood floors imperfect but gorgeous nonetheless; your rooms flowed into each other nicely, with some vintage touches that hinted at your 1920 birthdate. The surrounding land, ringed by a chain-link fence, was beautiful too. A weeping birch in front; two mature cherry trees on the side; an apple and a plum tree in the back. AND A POND. YOU HAD A FREAKING POND.

Our only hesitation was that we weren’t sure about the neighborhood. We were used to being close to everything in central Seattle, and your location felt so far from school and work. Plus, Rainier Beach didn’t exactly have a good reputation. The consensus among our (mostly white) peers was that the neighborhood was sketchy and the schools were bad and the crime rates were high. 

(An aside: Now, I can recognize both the coded racism behind these criticisms of a neighborhood where the majority of residents were non-white, and also the ways in which segregation and lack of resources have affected the area’s crime rates and test scores. I love this location for so many reasons, but I’m very aware that my experience of it as a white homeowner is quite different from that of many of my neighbors. We were also part of an early wave of gentrification that continues to sweep through our city. Displacement is everywhere. And for these reasons there is some dissonance in this letter. I want to pay tribute to you, but it also feels a bit insensitive since the housing stability we have is increasingly out of reach. There’s no way we’d be able to afford living in Seattle anymore if it weren’t for you. How to grapple with these contradictions? I don’t really have an answer to that, but it’s definitely firing me up to work toward a future where housing is affordable for everyone.)  

Oops, got a little off track there! Okay, back to 2004….

After spending some time getting to know the neighborhood, we began to see its charms and could envision ourselves building a long-term home here. We decided to put in an offer. But there was competition (we weren’t the only ones who fell in love with you!), and we couldn’t offer much above the asking price. Fortunately for us, our realtors were friends with the owner and knew that she wanted to sell it to someone who would love it as much as she had. So I wrote an impassioned letter about how we’d take good care of you, how we wanted to put down roots and plant a garden and, eventually, raise a family here. I even recall going to the real estate office and reading the letter out loud to her in person. (I’m not sure this actually happened because it seems not normal? But I have a distinct memory of this, so I’m going with it.)

View from the back deck, looking out over trees and rooftops

When we found out that our offer had been accepted, I was giddy. We felt so incredibly fortunate that it had worked out. And all those things we’d said in the letter? Every word was—and still is—true. We remain here because we love you, all of you: not just the shelter you provide within your four walls but also the larger you that includes all the plants and birds and squirrels and insects that make their home here on this land alongside us (except I could do without the ants) (okay, fine, ants—you guys are all right, as long as you stay outside the house). 

Though we never saw you as merely a transaction or as a stepping stone to a “better” house, that way of thinking is so pervasive that it’s hard not to fall prey to it sometimes. But writing this letter has clarified that I don’t think of myself as your owner; I see what we have as a relationship. Sometimes I feel bad that we don’t have the financial means to make huge improvements or lovingly restore you to the level of splendor that you deserve. But we try to keep up as best we can, to attend to your needs, to adjust the space so it fits who we are as we grow and change. And I know, too, I’m not the best at keeping the house sparkling clean or the yard neatly manicured, but I think you’re okay with that. The birds sure do like those overgrown hedges….

In the end, I suppose that what I want is to let go of comparison and all the self-consciousness that comes along with that, and to love you as unabashedly as B does. Whenever friends are coming over for the first time, he’ll throw open the door and say, “Welcome to our home!” as if ushering guests into the finest abode they’ve ever laid eyes upon, and I hope that even if they notice how smudgy the windows are and the claw-marks on the sofa and the dusty floorboards, what they remember is the way it feels to be inside your cozy, homey space. 

I hope they feel the love, most of all.

❤️,

Alanna