If not now, when?

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.)  

John and L.J.

September 1979

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.  

 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.