Still Here by Jamie Kirkpatrick

A few days hence, my wife and I will celebrate the 11th anniversary of our arrival in Chestertown. That hardly qualifies us as “from-heres,” but I think it’s safe to say that we’re no longer newly minted “come-heres.” It’s an important distinction in these parts, and while we’ll never be of the former ilk, we’re no longer the new kids on the block. We straddle the distinctions, and I’m OK with that.

The first time I came to Chestertown—it was 1995, I think—my daughter was in the car with me. She was a high school junior, and we were coming to look at Washington College. We pulled up to the Admissions office, and I climbed out of the car. Dana didn’t move. “Can we go now?” she said. Dana was—is—an artist, and she knew she needed a bigger canvas for her paintings than Chestertown. I wasn’t so sure, but she was the one looking at colleges, not me. I got back in the car and off we went.

There are two renditions to the next chapter in my Chestertown story: my wife’s and mine. According to her, we came here to take a look at a property on Washington Avenue that two of her sisters and their husbands owned as an investment. Winter was coming on, and we needed to check the furnace. It might even be time to sell the property. My wife is a realtor, and, for her, that kind of thinking is hard to resist. So, according to her version of the story, we came to Chestertown to take a professional gander at a house, nothing more.

My own version of that day is a little more nuanced. In my memory, I had awakened one day a month earlier, and had one thought on my mind: I wanted to visit Chestertown again. I felt it deep in my bones. That long-ago aborted college visit with my daughter had left a long shadow in my brain, and something had summoned it back into the light. So when we were invited to look at a Chestertown property, I saw my chance and hitched a ride.

The events of the day 11 years ago are still quite clear in my mind. We took a look at the furnace in the big house on Washington Avenue and decided it was time for lunch. I ate Moroccan chili at Brooks Tavern. After lunch, we decided to drive by a few other listings “just for fun.” Somehow, we ended up on Cannon Street where we saw a “For Sale” on a small row house next to a wonderful restaurant. The house appeared vacant, but was listed “By Appointment Only.” We decided to take a peek at the back yard, and while we were snooping, a lovely woman came out of the house and asked if she could help us. Mortified, we admitted we were interested in the house—we were?—and she invited us in. Her husband had bought the distressed house the year prior, the renovation was now complete, and the house was back on the market. The bait was on the water. 

Two details closed the deal, at least in my mind. There wasn’t much furniture in the house the day we saw it except for a small table in the living room on which there was a Pittsburgh Steelers Kleenex box. Pittsburgh is my own “from-here” town, and the Steelers have always been my team. It was a sign from God! And then I saw a large empty wall, one that would perfectly accommodate one of my daughter’s largest paintings, my personal favorite. I could see it there that day, and that’s where it still hangs today.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We didn’t just buy a house, we bought a home. Friends. An entire town. We call our home Standing Room Only because it really is that small. But it’s more than enough. Does it really matter why we came to town that day? We’re still happily here.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.