By Peggy Sturdivant

“Shouldn’t you have a safety net?” a voice asked from below while I was priming the rickety second floor windows of the family’s 1870 cottage on the east coast.

“Probably,” I said. I felt so overwhelmed by a losing battle against rotten wood that my own safety seemed unimportant. A stable ladder would have been more helpful, as well as a paintbrush that wasn’t losing bristles with every stroke.

A neighbor passed by. From Memorial Day through the end of June there’s an annual scramble to complete exterior work. “Where’s your life line?” he asked. “Is that how you do things in Seattle?”

No. How I do things on Martha’s Vineyard is rarely the same way that I do things in Seattle. On Sunset Hill Martin would have me strapped into a safety harness and on a lead line if I so much as tried to crawl out on the roof to wash our windows.

I spent much of my last two days with the family on the shallow overhang of roof above the front porch of the cottage. Most people who passed didn’t know I was above them, obscured by the carved gingerbread decorations. “This is really the outskirts, isn’t it?” I heard one tourist say to another. The gingerbread houses have a lot of visitors in the summer. Every day the tourists come on the ferries and then are loosed on us by bus, bicycle and on foot, bearing the suspiciously colorful visitor map. Most visitors have turned back before they get as far as we live. Sometimes they’re lost and ask how to get back to that big park in the middle.

“Excuse me ma’am.”

My family forgets I’m out on the roof so I forget that I’m so visible. I looked down. When I’m painting the two outermost windows there are no handholds, the windows are taller than me and my standing room is only 18” deep. Another reason not to pay too much attention to those passing by.

A young woman pointed to our hammock. “Is that hammock public or private?”

Although I pointed her up the lane I realized it was a fair question. The line between public and private is very blurred when you live in a designated historical site. Very little is private, especially since the wood cottages are so close together, the showers are outdoors, and screens are all that separate inside from out.

As more of an eavesdropper on my family than participant my time on the roof has been the most private of my stay. Not inside with the television tuned to Red Sox. Not passing though dormitory style bedrooms. The alone time priming and painting has allowed me to reflect on my family’s 53 years in this cottage. To recall the time that my father did fall off the roof, breaking his fall with an oak branch on his somersaulting way down from the upper peak.

I think about how different my life is in Ballard, with its increasing density, the regularity of the float planes and those annoying helicopter tours swooping over Shilshole. The neighborhoods are not currently protected from huge changes at all, just the opposite.

Life is different on the Vineyard, just different. I do things like take my father along to the town dump so we can renew the senior resident sticker. People talk openly about having their septic tanks pumped. There’s no mail delivery, just the Post Office box we’ve had since the 1960s. There’s a fish fry on Thursday nights at the Portuguese-American Club.

I think about the cottage beneath my feet. Despite its frailty I love every crumbling piece of it. I love the rose bush that is snaking all around the shampoos in the outdoor shower and the sound of acorns hitting the eaves. I know every creak this house can make as though it’s my own pulse. With enough money and a dependable caretaker this cottage could survive for another 145 years. Rotten beams could be replaced; historically accurate windows could be made for a price. What cannot be halted is our own aging and frailty.

My father hasn’t been up the narrow staircase since his stroke four years ago. I can tell by the sound that my mother’s knees hurt when she ascends. We lived here with my grandparents as they aged out of driving and stairs. Now it’s my parent’s turn, and with one backward step I could join them in a hip replacement and handicap placard.

There’s no safety net to prevent aging, just better choices…calcium and exercise to keep the bones strong, sensible shoes, and someone to hold the ladder. For all my sense of despair, it’s this house that will survive us. But next time I will remember to pack my safety harness.