I graduated from Tabor in 2002, and this past summer, my husband and I moved to Marion. We purchased the Oliver Cobb House at 460 Front Street and opened the Silvershell Inn. Moving to Marion wasn’t an earth-shattering idea: I graduated from Tabor, my husband and I met at the Buzzard’s Bay Regatta in 2010, we got engaged on the dock at BYC, and we were married at St. Gabriel’s Church. But, the decision to buy a 216-year-old house was a leap into the deep end. We thought ourselves well-equipped—I was a technical theatre major and my husband worked construction during his summers in college.
The four-bedroom house is nearly all original, replete with crooked floors and lift-latch doors. We decided to install two more bathrooms shortly after moving in and are doing nearly all the work ourselves. I’m thankful I learned how to draft and read blueprints and use woodworking tools from Mr. Van fifteen years ago! While building sets, painting scenery, and sewing costumes taught us the basics, theatre is what I did as my extracurricular. This house is my life. I have to figure out how to get modern plumbing and electric wires through solid chestnut trees posts and beams. Did you know that 200 years ago, posts and beams were made out of chestnut trees? Or that walls were built 
with 1” thick chestnut boards faced with plaster and lathe? We didn’t either.
Working all week then working on the house on our weekends is exhausting, and at times, dismal. But then, we catch a glimmer of joy: sharing our home with other Seawolves: some prospective, some current, some past. I’ve spent most of my adult life overlooking the personal connection I can have with others simply through Tabor. Often they are people I don’t know, or knew but didn’t hang out with fifteen years ago. Yet, a timelessness exists to our greeting and inevitable friendship. Long ago, we grew up, moved away, lost touch, but Tabor is like a hyperactive sheepdog: it snaps at your heels and gathers you back to a place you called your home years ago, and I am happy to call my home now.
