Old-Fashioned

Or, What is Preservation?

Photo by Tolu Olubode on Unsplash

---

“And what do you do, Frances?”

Now it was her turn. Each of the women in the circle had taken her turn in telling the others what she did, or didn’t do, for a living. Frances didn’t much care for small talk, but she had no choice but to answer. The dinner party had only just started and her husband wouldn’t want to leave for hours.

“Actually, I manage and operate a small building company. I’m not the contractor, but I organize all the backend stuff. Hiring, firing, project management, business strategy, etc. We’ve actually just started a major project up at West Lake – tearing down some old homes and putting in a new luxury apartment complex.”

“Oh, wait,” said Jennifer, “I think I know that place. I drive by it all the time. They just started work on it last Thursday, right? I saw the flags and the guys out working. Your company is Kytchen Building and Design? I saw the logo.”

“Yeah, that’s us. It’s an exciting project. These will state-of-the-art apartments. This’ll have our guys working through early 2024. I was very excited to win it.”

“Wait, but you’re tearing out the old Frederickson homes?” asked Jennifer. “The ones that were on the hill by the Walgreens? Owned by the Frederickson family and Saloman families?”

“Yes.”

“I know those,” chimed in Annabelle. “They were so quaint. I always liked looking at them. So dainty. Like an old postcard. Wasn’t one of those homes built in 1900? And the others not much after that? I always thought they were so charming to look at.”

“You didn’t have to live there,” said Frances, who was a little peeved at this new turn of conversation. Each of the women in the circle now piped up, taking turns to go around and say they knew the houses in question and, “wasn’t it a shame that the families didn’t want them anymore?” and, “wouldn’t the new apartment building be gaudy?” and, “won’t this make the traffic worse if a bunch of new people move in there?” and, “didn’t anybody care about preservation anymore?”

“Look,” said Frances, when they’d all said their piece about her business, “my company doesn’t make the call. We just take the projects we get. The Frederickson and Saloman families don’t want those properties anymore. They sold them to Youngston Residential, and Youngston hired us to tear out the old houses and put in a new apartment complex. We just develop. We don’t destroy.”

“But why now? Those homes had been there for over a hundred years?”

“People weren’t living in them anymore and the families didn’t want them,” said Frances. “And, besides, you know what the housing market is like right now. And the rental market. People need places to live. These apartments will give hundreds of young professionals and families their own clean, nice, new place to live. That’s got to count for something.”

“But those houses were historic. Don’t the Frederickson and Saloman children have any respect for their past?” asked Annabelle. “Which was the one with the shutters that were practically falling off? It looked like something out of an old book.”

“How would you like to live in a house with shutters that were falling off?” said Frances, thoroughly annoyed at this point.

“I love old homes. My dream would be to move into some old Victorian fixer-upper. Oh, so romantic. I just love the way old houses smell. Such charm.”

“Well, other people like to live in new places. And there will be a lot more of them that will get a chance to have a place to live in an area with decent schools because of the work my company is doing on this apartment complex.”

“Oh no! There’s already too many people moving in here. Things were so much slower a decade ago. Better-paced. Now it’s all hustle and bustle and young people with no respect for place. And some of them will be wanting to send their children to school with our children!”

Frances gritted her teeth at this. “Have you ever considered,” she asked, “that from other people’s perspective, that might be a good thing?”

“Look,” said Jennifer, jumping into the conversation again, “I just want to ask you something, Frances.”

“What?”

“Don’t you feel just the slightest bit guilty – I mean the slightest bit – at the thought that you’re destroying something that ought to be preserved? You know, for future generations. It just, sort of seems a little wrong. I know it wouldn’t sit right with me. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but sometimes it’s good to talk about these things. I was just thinking that that might be why you – well, I’ll be blunt – you seem a little, teensy bit defensive. Just a tad. No shame. No judgement. We all do things for money we aren’t proud of sometimes. I mean, just last week I-“

Frances stopped her before Jennifer said something nobody wanted to hear. “Do I feel guilty about the work my company is doing? That’s what you’re asking me?” Frances asked.

“Well, yes. Do you?”

“No.”

All the women looked at one another. “Even a little?” asked Annabelle.

“No.”

“I know I would. Just a little. It just seems like… I know! Those houses were antique. They were antiques. Antiquated. Tearing them down just seems like burning old books or smashing old rocking horses.”

Frances lost her patience. “First of all,” she said, “it’s not. It’s not like burning old books. Second of all, we’re practically drowning in old shit. Future museums will have plenty of old crap to stock their shelves with. We don’t need to save every single ashtray and neon sign and flush toilet just because it’s been around for twenty years. Material objects only have meaning insofar as we give it to them. If that makes me a bad person to you, fine. I don’t care about preserving old houses at the expense of failing to provide nice new accommodations to lots of people. And, you know what, I don’t think old things happen to accrue any value just because people used them a long time ago in the past. If something’s valuable, it’s valuable. If it’s a piece of junk, it’s still a piece of junk a hundred and fifty years later.”

Annabelle looked affronted. Jennifer looked like she thought Frances was being very rude. The other women all displayed varying degrees of shock or annoyance.

But at that moment, the dinner call came and everyone had to take their places at the tables. The hosts had assigned seating, which meant they had purposefully split up the spouses. Frances was sitting next to a man and woman she didn’t know, but Annabelle was across from her and Jennifer was two places down. Over soup and salad, everyone studiously avoided picking up where they’d left off in their previous conversation.

The man sitting next to her introduced himself as Jorge and the woman on the other side said her name was Pippa. Jorge was a retired schoolteacher, and naturally, this brought the conversation to school and children.

Frances’ daughters were 11 and 6. Jennifer and Pippa and Annabelle all had girls in early high school and late middle school. A few other women seated near them joined the conversation.

“I’ve got a 12-year-old daughter,” one said.

“Same,” said a woman who appeared to be her friend, “they’re best friends.”

Soon, the conversation grew a little too gossipy for Frances, who still thought of her children as children and not as her “best friends.” Jorge was a little too into the gossip, but Frances had known a couple teachers like that when she was in school, so she wasn’t completely surprised.

“11 is the perfect age,” he told her. “They’re just getting into boys at that age.”

Before she could say that this was a little creepy coming from a retired male schoolteacher, he said that had daughters in college himself, and he remembered well their middle-school days. “You know,” he said, “there’s this stereotype of the father who’s totally not comfortable with his daughters dating and he threatens her boyfriends with a shotgun. But I was, like, a cool dad. I mean, mainly it was my wife. But we were cool parents.”

“You were a cool dad?” Annabelle asked. “I like it. I think I’m the cool mom. I mean, I like my daughter’s friends. They like coming over to my house. I bake them cookies and, get this,” she lowered her voice, “I even let them put a little gin in the cookies last weekend. You know, why not? Kids are gonna have fun.”

She grinned. Jorge nodded. “Our philosophy was that ‘they’re probably going to do it anyway,’ so I’d rather supervise,” he said. “Honestly, I think that was a smart decision. I drove my daughter or her friends anywhere, anytime, and I think I probably prevented a few accidents that way. Definitely made more sense to let her friends crash on our couch than have someone get behind the wheel after getting drunk. Or high.” He laughed awkwardly and began rambling, “This country’s got outdated weed laws, anyway. What do I care? We lived through the 90s. C’mon. It’ll probably be legal everywhere in like five years, so I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“What about you, Frances?” asked Jennifer. “Are you the ‘cool mom?’”

Frances was surprised. She’d never thought about this question. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just focus more on being a mom and I’ve never really thought about what my daughters’ friends think about me.”

“Old-school mom,” said Annabelle, nodding, “I totally respect that. Everybody’s got their own way.”

“Frances, you said Clare is 11, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had her get the HPV vaccine yet? It’s about that time.”

Frances had just put a bite of fish in her mouth. She chewed slowly and swallowed.

“No. We haven’t.”

“Any particular reason why you’re waiting?”

“Um. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem like the right time yet. She’s still a little young. She only just started middle school in August and she only turned 11 in June.”

“She does know about the birds and the bees? You told her?” asked Jennifer.

Frances nodded slowly. She wanted to roll her eyes, but she felt uncomfortable now, in a different way than before.

“Well, what’s the holdout?”

“I said, I don’t know. We just think it’s not the right time yet. Her pediatrician hasn’t even asked us about it yet. What’s the rush?”

“What’s the rush? She’s in middle school!” said Jorge.

“Yes. Sixth grade.”

“Well, she’s probably still a virgin then. But for how much longer? I mean, seriously. This is 2017. This isn’t 1957. Or even 1977.”

“Hey, hold on. My daughter is still a child. Also, I was born in the 70s. I’m pretty sure teenagers had more sex in the 70s and 80s than they do now. And, I mean, excuse me? 11? How much longer will she be a virgin? Look, I may not be a prude or a busybody but that’s a little, a little, young. I’m not going to say schools should just teach abstinence or something, but middle school? Really? They’re still children at that age. Fine, we can stipulate that a lot of kids are having sex in high school. We can say that at some point before they’re 18. But 11? 12? I’m sure as shit that that’s too young.”

“Don’t be so naïve. We can’t pretend middle schoolers don’t know about sex. And hey, they have urges too. I taught middle school for twenty-five years. I know this stuff,” said Jorge.

“Yeah, look, I want to say this in a nice way,” said Annabelle, “but you have to be ready that it’s probably going to happen at some point. And wouldn’t you rather know?”

“Every kid is on the Internet now,” cut in Jennifer. “I mean, c’mon. They’re gonna see some shit. Porn, sexting, even just people talking about who’s been with who on social media or in private chats. It’s not like back in the day when you could send them up to their room and all you had to do was make sure they didn’t sneak out the window.”

“My daughter,” said Frances carefully, “does not have a phone.”

“Oh, come on. What do you think this is, 1995? She will be getting behind her peers. Look, I know. I had the same concerns with my daughters. But you can’t really get around it. Their homework is online. All their friends are online. There’s a lot of pressure. I think the safest thing to do is to just make sure you’re friends with your daughter on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and everywhere else.”

“And just, you know, talk to her doctor about that HPV vaccine. Just talk to her doctor next time you go. Not gonna push, but…,” said Jorge.

Before Frances could respond, Jennifer jumped in again, “Jorge’s right. Look, it seems like it was so much easier when we were growing up. But we can’t go back to that time. We can’t parent like it’s still the 90s either. We live in the twenty-first century and we’ve got to raise our kids in it. And, y’know, if that means the age of sexual maturity is a little lower, well, we’ve just got to make sure our girls are protected against STDs.”

“Enough,” said Frances, putting down her fork. “I’m not talking about this anymore. Change the subject.”

Annabelle shrugged. “Well, if you want to hide from the realities of it for a little longer, I don’t blame you,” she said. “It’s so much easier when they’re still innocent. Just don’t go believing that for too much longer. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I have a different philosophy on parenting than you do, Annabelle,” said Frances.

Annabelle couldn’t resist one last dig, “That’s clear. I’d say you need to get with the times.”

“I suppose,” said Frances, gritting her teeth once again, “that I’m just a little old-fashioned. That’s all.”