The book “Seven Houses: A Memoir of Time and Places,” written by Josephine W. Johnson, c 1973, is 159 pages. I read it slowly, because though the book is prose, it seemed like poetry to me. The three sections of the book are I Oakland: Kirkland, Missouri, II Childhood Houses, III Hillbrook and the Old House. Each of the sections has a few pages of family photographs that show us people and places they lived.

“Seven Houses” begins at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The narrator lights a candle in the kitchen, and then she hears gunshots that celebrate the New Year. My 50 years of journals include many descriptions of New Year’s Eve. Here’s New Year’s Eve 2008:

We’re cozy here on a very cold and windy day n the country. We had fried polenta with Parmesan cheese, roast vegetables, peas-cheese salad, applesauce, and cookies. We played live music with our friends. Howard was on his guitar, and I played the piano.

As usual, the inside cover of my journal has a quote that still means a lot to me. It’s from the Leonard Cohen song “Ring the Bells.” Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.

Section I introduces us to her grandfather Joseph Franklin, who was born in 1836 in County Cork, Ireland. He came to the United States, and the house the family lived in was in Kirkland, MO.

In Section II we read about books she read as a child: Black Beauty, Little Women, Uncle Tom, Lady Jane. Each chapter has a drawing on the first page. These illustrations are by Peter Parnall. I always spent time looking at the drawings. One of my favorites was a hammock with a little girl in it. We had a hammock in our yard when I was a little girl.

Section III brings us to the farm her parents bought 15 miles from St. Louis. Her father named the place Hillbrook. He died a few years later, and Josephine writes that her mother “was left with four girls, two-hundred acres, and four living sisters of her own” (p. 86).

This is the longest section. It describes her life with her husband Grant and their three children. Their marriage was in 1947, and the place they bought in Newton, OH, was built in 1810. It was meaningful to me that the place had hyacinths and daffodils. Grant was from a Mormon family. When he was 18 he left the church, but he played the flute and sang a Mormon hymn. He came to St Louis riding a freight car and staying in hobo camps. He was drafted and was in the Army during WW II.

One way to follow the poetic book is to tune in with how she writes about the seasons in nature. Here are some examples:

“April is the perfect month” (p. 97).

May is a “sea of bluegrass on the lawn covered with mist” (p. 119).

“Hot damp days came in June at the Old Place” (p. 134).

“The first frost came on the sixth of October” (p. 144).

Then it’s November and she describes “a great flowing wind” (p. 149).

It is a windy day when I’m reading the last few pages of the book in early November.

Her last sentence: ” …the Old House was the most beautiful, the most memorable, of all the shelters, all the homes, on the long journey” (pp. 152-153.)

The picture I’m sharing with you is the house I grew up in. The small town was Ferguson, IA. As I was bringing my thoughts about the book to a close of this journey, I wrote down one of the many connections I’ve felt with Josephine Johnson. It’s a list of the Seven Houses I’ve lived in during the years of my life.

What would I do without reading books?

Interested in reading more about the history of houses? Here are some titles available from your Marshall-Lyon County Library: “A Field Guide to American Houses: the definitive guide to identifying and understanding America’s domestic architecture”; “Tree houses: fairy tale castles in the sky”; “Frank Lloyd Wright: the houses.” Request these and many others at marshalllyonlibrary.org.