Bicentennial

"Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them."

-Ruskin Bond

Quite a lovely morning out there.

Forty-eight degrees at 7 a.m. Fall's creeping back into our lives. Good riddance, summer, although this one we'll remember fondly for the rest of our lives.

Dean and Slane will surely remember the summer of '25, when they lost their freedom as we moved into a condo with no patios and no way out, perched along one of the busiest streets in Corning.

Peg coaxed me outside to sit on the front porch of the building for a bit yesterday afternoon, enjoying the 74 degree day and the light breeze out of the north. She marveled at the steady flow of cars and buses up and down the hill. The local community college lies at the end of the street, and judging from the traffic I'd say classes have begun. Slane would be squashed within moments of his release from this place. So here inside he'll stay.

The summer of '25 also marks an anniversary we'd pledged to observe since first running across it a few years ago. Lucia Marvin Olcott would've turned 200 this year.

Well, probably. Lucia's an enigma like that--we know the day she died, August 25, 1850, but we don't know her birthdate because it wasn't on her headstone. We know she was twenty-five on that August day she passed, likely at Tara, a couple blocks from where I'm sitting.

I've recounted Lucia's story, or what we know if it, in past posts. She was married to Thomas Olcott, Jr., the scion of a banking and railroad guy whose home in Albany is now the governor's mansion. We know Olcott was the first owner of the parcel where Tara now stands, and that the house was completed in 1849. He and Lucia had been married at that point maybe four years, and had already lost two children in infancy when they came from Albany to the new house in Corning. Lucia died within the first year they were here. Thomas moved back to Albany, remarried, had more kids, and died a couple decades later.

Lucia's headstone depicts one of the saddest tableaus you'll ever see.

The image is faint now, gradually washed away over the years. Lucia ascends on angel's wings to the greeting arms of her dead children, one holding a crown to welcome mother home. Thomas must've been swallowed with grief at it all.

For the last four years she's been turning lights on and off, moving keys into the bathroom sink, creating bitterly cold spots a foot or two in diameter in an otherwise toasty changing room, and occasionally floating past Peg's peripheral vision over her shoulder while she's doing her makeup in the master bath. Slane could obviously see her, as he'd sit transfixed in the bedroom staring at an empty space where something seemed to be looking back at him.

Lucia's never been a menacing presence; rather, she seemed happy to see her house being restored and to see all the life in the place while we were there.

We weren't sure how she'd take the move, or whether we'd see her again.

Last night we honored our commitment, despite the change of venue, with candles and a traditional 19th century trifle to cap a meal that wasn't really a birthday so much as a celebration of life, commenced 200 years ago.

This old condo is equipped with an alarm system installed two or three decades ago, with a keypad next to the front door. It beeps twice whenever someone comes through the door, and Peg complained every time it chirped that she'd love to figure out a way to turn it off.

Last night at 3 a.m., the system started a rhythmic beep every three or four seconds, something we'd never heard before. I shuffled to the keypad, which was flashing that it needed to be reset. I found the "ESC" button in the darkness and pressed it. The dialogue box then asked if I wanted to disable front door monitoring. I pushed "Yes" and went back to bed.

When Peg walked out the door with her coffee a little while ago on her way to work, the alarm system stayed silent.

Maybe that was Lucia's birthday gift back to us, for remembering her name all these years later.