gatherings | Twenty-Something Thanksgiving

The houses in Northampton aren't like the ones I've known in other college towns. They aren’t worn in the wrong places and carelessly maintained, where the residents change in yearly cycles. The furniture doesn’t feel unrooted.  The houses are old, usually more than a hundred years. They are stately manors with shutters and turrets. The rooms have been divided and turned into apartments. The front windows of each floor glow warmly when night falls at 4:30. 

These are the houses of people learning to build a life. Learning, slowly, how to stay. It takes shape from the smallest intentions - buying a cheese-grater or a liner for the shower-curtain, subscribing to The Times. A week's worth of newpapers stack up on the coffee table waiting to be recycled. But there’s an address listed and a routine. It’s a commitment to tomorrow, at least.

It's a vibrant kind of in between: being young but feeling older. There are built-in shelves, but they're over flowing with textbooks and drawings tacked to the walls. There's no stock-market talk. No throw-pillows. No Tuscan color-schemes. 

You can imagine us on Thanksgiving, twenty-somethings in antique chairs. We are people who basted a turkey. Who picked the outer-leaves off of brussels sprouts. The fire is crackling and we're laughing, and there's good wine on the table. 

And though every dish in the cupboards is dirty. And there's no more room in the sink. And the turkey was pulled out of the garbage can, because we'd forgotten the wishbone. 

Here we are attempting, so honestly, to make this place our home. 

(photos) on film with pentax k1000 | Lisbet's house, my first thanksgiving in Massachusetts.
(p.s) the table, before.