Little Rock, Arkansas – July 2025

This past weekend, we packed our bags and headed to Little Rock for my cousin Anna’s wedding. It was a joyful blur of flowers, vows, and dancing next to a picture-perfect view of an Arkansas sunset, but one of the things that surprised me most was how much I fell in love with the house we stayed in: a 105-year-old Craftsman bungalow tucked on a quiet street not far from the wedding venue.

I’ve spent most of my life in houses that are 20 or 30 years old: nice, functional, predictable homes with working dishwashers and builder-grade cabinets. But this house? It had stories in its bones. Wavy glass windows. Solid wood floors that creaked just a little. Real key-hole locks that you could look right through, much to my 8-year old’s delight. There was a claw-foot tub that felt like it was holding hands with history. The front porch was wide and shaded, with the traditional blue southern ceiling. It was the kind of house you could imagine someone being born in and growing old in too.

As the weekend went on, I couldn’t stop thinking about the house. I found myself Googling its history, trying to piece together who had lived there, what their lives were like, and how many holidays and ordinary Tuesdays had passed beneath that roof. I started to wonder: who built this house? Did they have children? Did they sit on this same porch in the sweltering Arkansas heat, sipping sweet tea and swatting away mosquitos? Did they ever imagine someone like me would be here, over a century later, marveling at their craftsmanship?

Meanwhile, my cousin Anna was walking down the aisle.

I kept thinking about how I had carried her on my hip at my grandparents’ house when she was a baby. How she came to my wedding as a pre-teen with her signature smile and helpful personality. We’re about thirteen years apart, just enough that I’ve always had this mix of cousin, babysitter, and big sister affection for her. I remember her toddling around barefoot in my grandparents’ living room, and now here she was in a white gown, promising her forever.

Time has a funny way of folding in on itself sometimes. One moment I was brushing my teeth in a century-old bathroom with the original tile, and the next I was watching Anna laugh with her new husband on the dance floor. One minute I was scrolling through old property records, and the next I was toasting to a brand new beginning.

Maybe that’s why I got so wrapped up in the house. It was a backdrop for reflection, on how people grow, how time passes, and how something as simple as wood and brick can hold so much more than just air and furniture. It can hold echoes.

That weekend, I didn’t just attend a wedding. I walked through a century. I revisited baby Anna in my memories and saw her as a bride. I watched my own kids play on the porch of a house older than all four of their grandparents. And I realized something: homes don’t have to belong to you to leave a mark.

We left Little Rock with tired feet and full hearts, but I also carried something else with me: a quiet appreciation for old houses, for passing years, and for the strange, beautiful ways time weaves us all together.