My parents inherited an old house in the Ardens a while ago. Old as in older than Belgium old. Yesterday we set out to clean some rooms to make it a more comfortable place to spend a weekend.
The things you find are fascinating. There’s the stuff of life as it used to be: religious symbols everywhere. Holy virgins, jesuses and religious pictures in every corner. Butter churners, old radios, porcelain washing basins and throughs. Delft plates. Old tools.
The letters. The ledgers – beautiful hand writing. The photos: stern black-and-white men in suits, of in uniform. Women as unsmiling as the men, looking down from impressive hairdos, or from under nun’s caps. Officer, priest or nun were pretty common careers, decided upon by the father.
The house is an old farm house, warped by humidity. Forest on one side, meadows on the other. It’s amazing to imagine these people, my forebears, going about their business – hard people working hard, in a very structured, regimented world. A different world.