Kitchen, Williamsburg, Virginia, June 7, 2024. Photo: Michael Ward.
There are moments when I have no choice but to stop and appreciate what I am looking at. I came to this house to photograph it for a polished rental listing. I did that job justice, but this room spoke to me in a different language, and I also had to capture it the way I saw it.
Older houses can be quirky and hard to imagine living in comfortably. But in a modern house, when the power goes out, you quickly get too hot or too cold. In an older house, you could open a dormer window and catch a cross breeze, or shovel some more coal into the boiler.
People knew things back then that we never learned, or have forgotten while being distracted by that slab of electronics in our palm.
This kitchen is in Williamsburg, but it brings back memories of an old farmhouse from my childhood elsewhere in rural Virginia. I remember visiting that house as a child and not being able to roll over in bed at night because the weight of the quilted blankets pinned me to the mattress. I remember finally escaping the quilts and coming downstairs to see a chicken being plucked for dinner that night, and hungry people gathering together to eat after a hard day of work.
It was a long time ago, and some of those memories still occasionally wander through my dreams.
This is a different house, in a different place and time. One day this room will be gone, or remodeled into something more modern. Some of that has already happened. The sink in this photograph was later re-enameled, covering the worn iron that years of use had exposed.
There is nothing wrong with repairing a house. Houses have to change if they are going to keep being lived in. But sometimes the repairs erase the evidence.
The heart of a home is in the repetition of ordinary things: meals prepared, dishes washed, conversations held across a kitchen, people coming home tired and sitting down together. Eventually, those ordinary acts leave marks.
For a little while, those marks remained visible here.
How many dishes had to be washed in this sink before the enamel finally wore through?