"The House on Shoreline Drive" by Ruby Luhrman
Photograph of Wintercount by the author
Wintercount is the name of my grandmother’s house. The house sits angelically over what she so fondly calls Sisters Cove. The house (like her) is weathered and worn but in the most beautiful way. It has silvery, wooden shingles with trims the colors of seafoam and plum. It sits nestled beside a ravine and perched above the waves like a tree house of sorts.
On the other side of the yard, trees create a natural barrier between Wintercount and the street. Mostly, they are evergreens that have resided at the house for many more years than I’ve had the privilege of visiting, but some of them are newer and were planted by my family with snippets of my sister’s and my golden hair tucked into the soil beside the seeds.
The driveway is cracked and eroded from years of drawing with chalk and cold water from the hose on bare feet in the summertime. Raspberry bushes line the driveway which burst with sticky, sweet fruit in the warm months. When we were little, my sister and I would pick handfuls of the crimson berries and suck on their flavor until our lips were painted red.
“I love your lipstick,” my mother would smile.
“Thank you!” my sister and I would sing.
The inside of the house is musky and dim. It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. There are no overhead lights and all the lamps contain yellow bulbs that fill the rooms with a warm and creamy glow. The furniture is old and threadbare, but I am somehow always more comfortable at Wintercount than I am anywhere else. My sister and I have always slept in the room that once belonged to my mother when she was a child. The thought of her living and growing up in the room decades before always strikes me when I’m sitting on the quilted bed.
Wintercount is a time capsule littered with relics. Shelves are covered in books, mementos, and memories. Art fills the house whether it be my grandmother’s sculptures sitting upon surfaces, her friend’s paintings and photographs hung in frames on the walls, or poems and stanzas tacked in hidden corners for those who look hard enough.
Walking through the house is like walking through a museum of my family. Remnants of them live all over in picture frames and unfinished puzzles and forgotten post it notes. Images of my grandmother’s life and others of my mother’s fill the rooms. Portraits and candids and first day of school pictures occupy much of the space within Wintercount.
My family exists so strongly in Wintercount that I can feel them reverberating through the air waves. I can feel my family within the house even when they are not present. Their voices linger in the cobwebbed corners and the dusty window sills.
“I love you guys,” I would remark to my family when I was young.
“We love you, Ruby Lu,” my grandmother would reply in her silky, smooth voice. And with her, I could almost hear the house speaking too. Echoes of ‘I love you, Ruby Lu’ resounding through the walls.
Growing up, we visited Wintercount when she was blanketed in snow or when she was surrounded by lilacs. Every time our car arrived in the driveway, Wintercount greeted us with outstretched arms and a violet emanation. Stepping into her frame feels like getting into a hot shower after playing in the snow. She has wiped my tears and watched me grow into a young woman.
Wintercount has remained largely the same throughout my entire life. Though this is true, there’s a heaviness in my chest when I think about how as I grow older, the house does too. I can see it in the worn surfaces and the faded paint. There are not many constants in my life or in anyone’s life for that matter. Nothing lasts forever and life is always changing and shifting. Wintercount, though, has been a constant throughout my sixteen years. It is where I go to remind myself of my roots and to feel connected to something greater. I can feel the weight of my family in the crooked stairs and the creaky banister. I can feel the crushing significance of girlhood and of sisterhood and of motherhood tied up within the house. Wintercount has an encapsulating maternal energy to me. I can feel my mother and my grandmother pulsing through the floorboards. Wintercount has cradled me and rocked me to sleep with a lullaby the same way my mother does when I have an unsettling dream.
I will always go back to Wintercount. The house has worked its way into my system the way your favorite childhood book does. When matters get hard, I crave the comfort that the house brings me. Within Wintercount, noise fades into the background and I get to experience a blissful quiet. There is a powerful serenity that hangs over Wintercount like a veil. I am unequivocally indebted to her and to those that she has sheltered so graciously.
Ruby Luhrman is 16 years old; she lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and she attends Waynflete School in Portland, Maine. Ruby states that she has loved writing and reading ever since she was little. When she is not reading or writing, she is probably spending time with her friends, family, and cat. “Poetry,” Ruby writes, “has been such a liberating force through the trials and tribulations of growing up.”