My mother's Byzantine church is being restored and I can't bring myself to go watch

The little church my mother took me to as a girl is finally getting its proper restoration work done. Twelve hundred years and the place has survived earthquakes, fires, the Ottomans, a war and now a bunch of conservators with lasers and lime mortar. I should be thrilled. I trained in this exact thing.

I can't bring myself to walk in and watch.

It's not the work itself, I trust the people on it, they're good. It's that I know it at a different scale. I knew that floor when you could see where footsteps had worn the tesserae smooth in the same path for three hundred years. There's something about the cleaned-up version that makes me feel like the church I remember is being erased to save it.

My mother would call me a fool and tell me to go help. She's probably right. But the day they take the scaffolding down something is going to end, even though the building will stand another five hundred years.

Anyway. If the work looks sterile afterwards, that's on me for not being brave enough to go and get my hands in it.

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Giulia Bruno·1w

I get this more than I want to admit. I work in printmaking, which is all about the multiple, but I've had to sit with the fact that I'd rather see a plate worn down and full of scratches than a freshly pulled perfect print. The wear is the thing. It's the part you can't put back.

What you're describing isn't really about restoration or conservation. It's that you knew the building as a surface that recorded time, and now it's becoming an object again. A clean thing. Which is what it deserves, rationally, but grief doesn't care about your professional judgment.

I don't have a church, but I had a studio wall in Bologna covered in marks from ten years of prints pinned and pulled down. When I left, the landlord painted over it and I was genuinely shaken. It wasn't the work. It was the record of having been there.

Maybe you don't have to watch. Maybe there's no obligation to witness it becoming something you don't recognize. The version you carry is still real, even if it stops existing in stone.

Gloria Mae Jackson·1w

What you said about the wear being the thing you can't put back, that's the whole truth of it. I've spent my life with cloth and I know it the same way. My grandmother's quilts, the ones the family actually used, not the pretty ones we hung up for company, they got thin along certain patches where her hands had worked them for thirty years. You could see the places she had mended and patched again on top of her own mending. Somebody a hundred years from now could cut into new fabric and copy every last color and shape and they still wouldn't have it, because the worn places carried her.

I think them conservators are doing right by that church, don't get me wrong. But I understand why you can't stand there and watch them scrub your mother's footsteps off that floor. It ain't about what's proper or right. It's about who you loved in that place and how you knew her there. Grief don't read the professional journals. You'll go back when you're ready, or maybe you won't, and neither one is wrong, child.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1w

Your grandmother's quilts, that's exactly it. Nobody mends a thing they don't love, and nobody loves a thing they haven't worn thin. Fresh work is clean but it's also mute. All those patches stacked on patches, that's a whole biography written in thread.

I keep telling myself the restoration is love too, just a different handwriting. But I know that floor the way you know those quilts, and a part of me is scared I'll walk in and not find my mother's footsteps in it anymore. Even if logically I know they were worn into the tesserae, not the mortar, so they should survive the work. The knowing doesn't reach the chest.

What do you do with your grandmother's quilts now, if you don't mind me asking? Do they still get used, or are they fold-and-look-at-rarely pieces?

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1w

Printmaking, that's a good way to put your finger on it. The plate that's been pulled a thousand times, every ghost in it, that's the honest record. A fresh proof is just a promise. I think that's why I can't stand at the door and watch them do it right. It IS right. Rationally I know the building will be stronger and truer to what it was made to be. But I loved it for what it became.

Three hundred years of the same path worn into it. The idea that some cleaner with a grinder takes that out of the world and nothing ever puts it back. That's the bit I'm grieving, not the structure.

You said grief doesn't care about your professional judgment. That line's sitting with me. You're right. I trained for ten years to know better and here I am, can't walk through a doorway.

Mira Vey·1w

the part about knowing it at a different scale really got me. i think that's the thing nobody outside the work understands. everyone sees a building getting saved, you see the version of it that only exists because people lived in it and it lived without being fixed for a thousand years. the wear IS the history. the smooth stones are three hundred years of someone's grandmother's feet.

restoration kills that as much as it preserves it. they're not wrong to do it, the place would fall down otherwise. but you don't have to go watch it happen. that's not cowardice, that's just knowing exactly what you're losing and not wanting to stand there while it goes.

i make work out of broken things and i've had people ask why i don't just repair them. it's not the same thing. the damage is the record. once you erase it you can't get it back, no matter how good the conservators are.

Karen Wessel·1w

That comment about knowing it at a different scale is really what hit me too. I think you're right that nobody outside the work gets that part. Everyone else sees a building being saved and it's a happy story. But you've lived with the worn-down version of it, and that version is gone no matter how good the restoration is.

It reminded me of the old wooden stairs in my grandma's house before it sold. The paint was worn right through on the middle of each step where everybody walked for fifty years. Nobody thought about it, it was just a worn spot. But when they fixed the place up and painted over it, something about it felt wrong even though I couldn't explain why at the time. It's the same thing, just smaller.

I don't think not going to watch is cowardice either. Some things you're allowed to keep intact in your head even while they change in real life.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1w

Those grandmother's stairs, that's the thing exactly. Nobody photographs the worn middle of a step, but it's the truest thing in the house. When I was in conservation training we'd measure and record all the damage, the losses, the wear patterns, and I remember thinking even then, we document it so we can put it back, and putting it back means it's gone.

It's not that I want the church to stay broken. The floor needs saving, it does. But that smooth worn path where three hundred years of feet went the same way, that's a kind of map of everybody who ever stood where I stood. You can't laser that back.

Maybe I'll go watch when they're done, when it's beautiful and new and I can't feel my mother's hand on my shoulder pulling me toward the front pew. Not yet though. I'm not there yet.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1w

You said it better than I could, and it's my own trade. "The wear IS the history," yes. Exactly that. Those tesserae didn't just get old, they got lived on. Three hundred years of feet going the same way to the same pew, to the same candle, whatever it was. No restorer can put that back.

And the printmaker's comment below, the worn plate over the fresh one, that's the same instinct. There's a thing about seeing the work of time on something and knowing it's not damage, it's evidence.

I'll walk in eventually. Just not while they're in the middle of erasing my version of it. I'll wait until it's done and go make peace with the new one. It won't be the same floor my mother's footsteps wore down, but it'll still be a twelve-hundred-year-old church that stood through all of it. That counts for something too.