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| Woodpile with Wheelbarrow |
I spent time with my grandparents when I was little in the house where my Mother grew up.
Lots of time.
Long endless unairconditioned summer days and cold dark winter evenings where rooms of the house were closed off by blankets and doors to keep the warmth
from the stack heaters and wood burning stove concentrated in the kitchen and den.
(Their wood burning stove was installed in the late 70s at the same time my dad
had one put in our den.
It was something
of a rural renaissance for my New York City born father who took to chopping
wood and building fires like you wouldn’t believe, but it was also a chance to
spend time with his father-in-law, who in his own understated quiet way poked
fun at my dad and his woodsy ways but from a place of love and respect, I’m
sure. Truly.)
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John and L.J.
September 1979
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Anyway, the house where I
spent so much time – it was hot.
And it
was cold.
There were a lot of extremes
from season to season is what I’m saying.
But in this house where I spent so much time, there were drawers and
trunks and closets and chifforobes of photos and letters and books and yearbooks
and paper dolls and record albums - memories of my Mother and my beautiful
aunts and their growing up years.
And
somewhere along the way, in those long summer afternoons and cold winter nights
I began to think of all of those things as my own.
Only child of me?
Maybe.
But laying stomach-down on the landing at the top of the stairs listening
to my Aunt Brenda’s Beatles album while looking through their high school
yearbooks and photo albums and reading my mother’s diaries and learning the
names of their friends
– their stories
became my stories.
Coupled with all the conversations
with my
grandmother about the way things
used to be – all of it always felt so familiar to me.
My Grandmother’s words and the photos and
being in the house where my Mother grew up – I just absorbed all of that into my
bone marrow.
My Mother died June 21, 2016.
My grandparents were married on June 21
st.
My grandfather enlisted in the Army on June
21
st of 1944.
Maybe it's just happenstance
that all those events coincided on the same date across seventy-six years, but I’m not a big believer in happenstance.
I
do believe in signs, however.
I’m a big
believer in signs.
A few weeks ago I
drove Owen back to Knoxville after a weekend here at home, and instead of turning
left onto Cumberland Avenue and heading toward I-40, I turned right and headed
toward Broadway/Gay Street.
Then I turned
left and drove out through Fountain City and Halls and then on out into the
country.
I had not been to the cemetery where
my Mother’s buried since the day we took her home.
But sitting in Owen’s car on that Sunday
afternoon I experienced one of those band-aid life moments – it was time to go home. So I drove the however many miles it is
from campus to Hickory Valley. I cried the whole way.
When I pulled into the cemetery – a place so familiar to me
from many afternoons spent there with my Grandmother that I can tell you who’s buried
where and who’s related to who and how – it took many minutes of me talking to
myself to get me out of the car.
Because
as familiar as this cemetery is, it’s a completely different place with my
Mother buried on top of the hill.
I did get out of the car [eventually] and made my way up to the top of the hill and stood near my Mother and Grandparents. And it was hard. Those people, those three people buried side by side were
the arc of so many of my childhood days.
Going to work with my Mother at the store*, waiting until my Mother said it was finally
late enough that I could run through my favorite Little House on the Prairie field
to my Grandparents house (it was after Donahue was over, by the way) where my
Grandma would make eggs for me – sunny side up – and then after I had what was my second breakfast knowing it was time to wake my Grandfather
up. And once he was ready to go, riding back to the store with him in his red
GMC truck.
That's a snippet of all the memories that absolutely flooded through me. All of those long ago days felt
so close. And my thought then, again, was that I don’t want to lose them.
So, there was that Sunday afternoon in the cemetery in the country, and Veteran’s Day
looking at photos of my Dad and Grandfather, and my Dad’s November14th birthday where the two of us sat and listened to a gentleman talk about his experience surviving the Holocaust, and then heading
once again into these weeks that hold my Grandfather’s experience in World War II.
The idea I’ve percolated for so long of trying to write down what I know has
become so insistent that I had to get up and write this morning before I could do anything else.
If not now,
when?
Now.
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My Mom and Dad - November 1978
His 40th Birthday
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*My grandfather had a Texaco station and grocery/convenience store. He and my mother worked together until he retired and closed the business when I was nine. I have the keys to the store building in a box in my living room.
