11) The Resurrection.

The three of you sit quietly in the back of the moving truck. Twenty six feet of empty, just hours ago packed to the max… now soft filtered light fills the aluminum void, a gentle rain pitter patters on the roof, the air is damp and cool, three small plumes of warm blue smoke waft from your joints, each exhale: a small cloud that dissipates quickly.

You’re thankful for your husband’s wherewithall… what had seemed like such a superflourus splurge… hiring two strong movers for four hours…. “Pfffft… unpacking was the easy part,” you had said to yourself, “Do we really need to spend the money?” You had asked your husband.

And now, you in your ridiculous leopard ballet flats (you have a way of never wearing the right shoes for the occasion) cold and soaked, your feet pruned and painful from the soggy ground were thankful that he had insisted on the ‘splurge.’ A necessity, really, when you imagined the three of you: you, your husband, and your best friend emotionally drained, tired and aching… trying to drag your king sized mattress up not one, but two flights of steep stairs.

“We’d have still been unpacking,” you muse out loud… the cold metal of the truck’s floor seeping through your rain dampened jeans.

“Yeah David… definitely a good call on the movers,” your best friend adds.

Your husband soaks it in… you’re not going to go so far as to say that he was right and you were dead wrong about your energy level after the last ten days… but, the man had definitely gotten this one correct. You’re all exhausted. Utterly, physically, spent. You’re so thankful to be done… knowing full well that the ‘done’ has only set the stage for the real work… the hard work… to begin.

When you take the last drag of your joint you slowly lift your bedraggled, cold, damp body off the truck’s steely floor, your pruned feet throbbing, and you smile, “well… now to get to work then I guess,” as if the three of you were just starting your day; not trying to recover from it…

“Ugh… yup…” your best friend groans. She’s up too, stubbing out the last tiny bit of her joint on the truck’s bed and flicking the paper tip into the bushes. You both carefully navigate the truck’s slippery metal ramp covered to keep you all from sliding off, in the rubber grip drop cloth.

You’re not quite sure where to begin. The entire place is filthy… not really filth per se,’ but rather the accumulation of at least five years of dust and neglect spread out over nearly 7,000 square feet. When you walk into the foyer you’re greeted by the smell of petrichor… a familiar smell outside, now it permeates the house, rising you think, from an old metal grate in the limestone floor… you wonder where the grate leads.

The foyer is huge. A sturdy rectangular room with a soaring white oak ceiling; a gray limestone floor hewn in thick, expertly cut blocks (the same blocks that make up the building’s foundation) that make their way about four feet up the walls where they meet the red brick (and the one wall of white painted brick) that stretches to the ceiling. The arched front entrance is comprised of two commercial glass doors (you have no idea when these were added to the building and what used to be there - you’ll figure this out later… your suspicions correct), flanked in glass blocks that look a bit too modern and out of place to be original, yet still work for the space, and topped off in a delicate half moon crescent of deep yellow stained glass (a few panes clear, replaced for repairs) painstakingly connected with a diamond pattern of old lead patchwork.

On either ends of the room are two steep limestone staircases. The one leading up to the north tower’s ground floor (on the left) has an old handrail that was added well after the original build. The staircase opens to a small brick room with the same gorgeous oak ceiling of the foyer (the doors that were once there, that you’d imagine would mirror the south tower’s entryway, are long gone… the only evidence of their existence: the spots where heavy hinges had been placed, the wood cut to make room for the thick brass hardware). Four tall thin windows, luxuriously framed out with the old oak and deep chunky wooden sills illuminate the magical space. You wonder what this space used to be… a second entry into the sanctuary?

The room is gorgeous save for the hardwood floor. The floor is covered in what could best be described as a thick substance, caked on and dried to a hard yellowish brown that resembled dried industrial glue (you’d later find out that this was the old linoleum glue… the linoleum long gone, the remover of the linoleum deciding to forgo the rest of the project)… you think that the floor resembles the view from a descending airplane as you make your way over a winter corn field, the ground a dark brown, neat rows of what’s left of the harvested wheat, a light beige that dot the brown in evenly placed rows…

Then there’s the holes… nine you count, all roughly the size of a baseball. The majority of the holes are in one corner, they look as if they were bored straight through to make room for some sort of conduit (now long gone) and never repaired. The few other ones make no real sense as to their cause or placement. You can kind of… though not fully, understand why someone wouldn’t have wanted to go through the trouble of shoring up the holes… even if the thought of linoleum on this wood makes you shudder. You make a mental note on an ever growing list, to get this floor taken care of…

To the other side of the foyer, the south tower’s ground floor is in far better shape than her northern counterpart… a light sanding, fresh coat of stain and varnish and she’ll be looking incredible. The south tower’s ground floor also differs in that the old hinges on the incredble wood moulding still hold the massive oak double doors that separate this space from the foyer and the second set that separate the room from the sanctuary. The doors all have panes of glass (too high for you to see through) and original brass hardware. Also in the south tower’s ground floor are two sets of staircases… one that leads down to the basement (which will be finished off and used as a playroom, three additional bedrooms, a second full bathroom, family room and your studio) a finished kitchen, two more entrances, and a laundry room left in a questionable state. From this staircase wafts the smell of must and mold: another mental note… address the cause of that smell.

The other staircase leads up to what has been dubbed as the ‘reading room’… not quite a library because your allergies don’t allow for the hoarding of books, but rather a space for you to read your books before passing them on… a primary bedroom with an incredible curved oak ceiling and an original stained glass panel from 1895, as well as a massive bathroom with a double shower, four windows and a slate floor.

Off of the reading room is another stair case in the northwest corner, much more narrow than the main one… this leads up to a small wooden door with a pane of glass (and a note that reads: keep door shut)… this is the guest room just under the belfry tower. This room is all white, save for the cherry floors. The 15’ ceilings: white. The walls: white. The doors and trim: white. Two sets of windows each crowned with a huge half moon window, long charcoal grey sets of curtains, and tattered plastic sheeting affixed with wooden firring strips expertly screwed into the frames… a thin sheild against the elements illuminate the incredible room. It feels like a warm nest, a safe hideaway… even with one of the window’s broken panes of glass (another mental note of shit to fix on that list of yours).

Back downstairs, next to the stained glass and limestone foyer, nestled next to the two brick rooms… lies the sanctuary… another crowning jewel in this incredible space. The ceilings curve up a soaring 23’ feet; white oak (stained dark like all the wood in this place) boards cover every inch. The rest of the room is white. There are rows and rows of windows, some with pointy arches, others rectangular in shape that span from the oak chair rail nearly up to the ceiling. Some rows of stacked windows are complete, while others are boarded up… panes long ago broken, waiting for their windows that have yet to be replaced. More oak in the form of corbels and the intricate framing of the double doors (and the place that once held double doors in the north tower) finish off the space. The floor is unfinished… a pressed wood subfloor caked in dirt, old earthenware clay, and some dark stains near both new and old roof leaks… and at the far back northwest end of the sanctuary, a single step to a small unassuming wood door, with an old brass panic… the fire exit.

Even with the dirty, stained subfloor and the smattering of missing windows, the space is incredible. There’s a sense of peace… hard to explain yet palpable. You’ve been in plenty of churches, old buildings, homes… and none have had this feeling… this otherworldly aura… this feeling of goodness, kindness, love… this building is less like a building and more like a living, breathing, entity. You all feel it. You all comment on it. You all believe that she’s inquisitively interested in us, her new caretakers… like a child who’s just found a brand new toy. And later on with each promise we make to her… to restore, renew, and care for her, with each project we take on… we swear we can feel her approval, her warm embrace… she’s thanking us… and we’re all in full belief that she wanted us here… that she chose us: that we were all fated to be in this moment, right now.

Our stuff is spread out in rows. The sanctuary was empty just hours ago and now she holds the entirety of our physical world: our children, our pets, all of our possessions. The kids sit on their made beds, just the mattresses laid out on sheets of plastic… the bedframes still packed. They stare at their ipads… screen time limits be damned today: they’re quiet, they’re out of the way, they’re entertained… and the way their little faces are illuminated… they too take on an ethereal glow in this heavenly space.

You stare in wonder at it all. You have so much work ahead of you… where to begin? You’ve got to clean… you need clean spaces in order to start unpacking… but you take a moment to soak it all in… the wood, the brick, the stained glass, the limestone blocks, even her minor blemishes (the windows and the holy floor and the musty, unknown smells wafting up through old metal grates in the floors)… she is incredible. And YOU have been entrusted with her care: a task you don’t take lightly in a place with this kind of history, in a place that will outlive your grandkid’s grandkids… you’re just a place-card in HER story… and for that you’re truly thankful.

Your daughter ruses you from your thoughts, “Mommy! Look at this!” She says, pointing to her ipad… you notice though instead, the acoustics of this grand space… the way her little voice is gently carried up the walls and over the curves of the white oak ceiling and the corbels and the leaded glass windows… and you imagine the old pipe organ (long gone) playing under the beautiful windows that overlook the distant blue green mountainside, you imagine the parishioners packed tightly together, singing along in harmony, they’re celebrating… a wedding, a baptism, an end of life memorial, and now you think… they’re singing for you… the caretakers… of this beautiful place.

She’s been waiting for you. This magical space is hers yes, but now you’ve been lovingly ushered in… yours for a short time too… your duty to her is profound… even if you’re just a blip on her timeline… you’re the protector of her tomorrow… Intrinsically you feel she knows this… and you also know that she’ll pay you back for the love you’re planning to put into her in infinite ways: her resurrection belongs to you both.

Top to bottom, left to right: The foyer. The south tower’s ground floor (David’s office space). The incredible 23’ high oak ceiling in the sanctuary with the doorways into each of the tower’s ground floors. The north tower’s ground floor with a plug in one of the nine holes. The reading room’s staircase up to the guest room. The primary bedroom (with the other owner’s furniture pictured).