Visits
This past month has been...insane. I have been going non stop for weeks. There was house sitting, rehearsals, the benefit, figuring out my new job situation without Gary's, and my trip home to see Amy and the twins, surprise Beth for her birthday and the rest of my family just cause.
I got back to LA today. It's been a very long day having begun at 4:45am EST and it's not going to end till probably 1 or 2 am EST. Last night, I was at the Topsfield Fair with Beth and now I'm back in LA jumping right back into the craziness that has become my life. Not that that is a bad thing...I just think I have a little bit too much going on right now and I need to chill a bit or I'm going to have a nervous breakdown before the end of the month.
On Saturday we went to my grandparent's old house to meet up with my aunt Judy, cousin Amy, her husband Nick, and their kids to move the washer and dryer out because the washer was going to my other grandmother's house and the dryer (GASP) was going to my parent's house. Not to replace a dryer mind you, but to be the very first dryer ever to enter the premises. I'm pretty excited about it even though I don't really do laundry there anymore, I guess I'm excited for my parents. Call waiting, digital cable, a flat panel TV (which they actually got by accident) and a dryer all in one year! Craziness.
The trip to my grandparent's house was actually a fairly significant experience, and not just because I had to get up at 6am to go move large heavy appliances during my vacation. It was probably the last time I will ever be in that house. It has tentatively been sold. So this was kind of a final goodbye to my grandparents on my dad's side.
It was surreal to walk through the empty house. All the sea-foam green carpeting, on which I first learned the basics of static electricity and its many uses in torturing my sister, is gone save for the stairs. It used to run throughout the house. Now everything seems cavernous. It's all shining hardwood floors and repainted walls. Steps echo through the space with nothing to absorb the noise. I found myself repopulating the rooms with the furniture and decorations I had always known growing up. The piano covered in pictures of my aunt, cousin, parents, sister, and me. Including the eighth grade photo in which the reflection of the photographer's umbrella in my glasses coupled with my glazed look makes it look like I'm about to experience an alien abduction. Perhaps the crown jewel of my awkward decade.
The artificial Christmas tree with all the antique ornaments. The many places that candy could always be found throughout the house. The loon paraphernalia that my grandfather was showered with after expressing passing interest in the bird he associated with relaxing vacations in Maine. Decorative plates and Hummel figurines. Details of the grain of the dining room table and the ice cream bowls. They came flooding back to me. Little things I hadn't thought about in years.
I was always fascinated by the eaves upstairs. I used to look in through the little white doors fascinated by the fact there was a "secret" tunnel from one side of the house to the other. I was tempted to crawl in now that the tunnel was empty and satisfy my 9 year old self's desire for adventure and secret passages...alas on closer inspection, with the boxes not blocking it, I realized that even 9 year old me would have been hard pressed to squeeze through the narrowest point.
My father's basement room still bears all the markings of a teenage boy in the 60's, vintage stickers from radio stations, bands, and places he worked that no longer exist adorn windows doors and walls. That was the first place I ever played darts, with real sharp metal projectiles. Mostly they got stuck in the wall. It was also one of the first places that it ever occurred to me that my father had existed before I came along and that perhaps there was more to my parents than my sister and I were aware of.
Even now, years after either of my grandparents lived in the house, and over a year after my grandmother's death, the house still smells the same. I've decided it's the wooden hearth in the living room that does it. Oak or cedar, I'm not at all sure, but that's what gives it that specific welcoming smell. It's like a cottage in the woods. Maybe I just associate it with them.
Mostly, I picture them in the house. My grandfather standing at the kitchen sink washing the dishes with a towel over his shoulder like he did after every single meal I ever ate there. My grandmother sitting at the table clipping coupons and chatting about the latest goings on at the church or down the street, while Days of Our Lives played out in the background. Or the two of them sitting in their chairs at one end of their huge living room observing all the activity at the holidays, like a suburban royal court.
Right before I left for Europe my sophomore year I was saying goodbye to both of them and they were sitting in their living room thrones. My grandmother had just started using her soon to be routine farewell of "I hope we're here when you get back," but at the time it still had a frightening impact. That Sunday when we said our farewells I decided on the spot to forgo the usual handshake and hugged my startled grandfather for the first time in years. He took it in stride and hugged back as if I hadn't ever stopped.
As I stood in the den on Saturday, the room I probably spent the most time in as a child, and placed the easy chair and couch in my mind, I looked out the window at the old fashioned lamp post by the driveway. Gone is the little sign that said "Pearson" and the little metal goldfinch that was fixed, forever perched, on top of it looking as though it had either just landed or was just about to take off. I was fascinated by that bird for some reason. All around that lamp the lawn that my grandfather so meticulously cared for for so long was scattered with yellow leaves that were continuing to rain down from the tree just beyond the sidewalk.
After the moving was done I went and joined the rest of my family in the only room that still has its furniture, the breezeway. The room where we all spent countless summer evenings and the place where, at the end of every visit, we always, inevitably said goodbye. On Saturday we sat on the same couches that have been there for as long as I can remember. The only thing absent was the sound of the numerous wind chimes that used to hang there. My cousin Amy's daughters Lindsey and Michelle were running through the house while she and I each fed one of her newborn twin sons their bottles. The twins, Paul and Anthony, at two weeks old were each still small enough to hold in one hand. They are the first in four generations who won't ever spend the night in that house, and the first who never got to meet either of my grandparents.
As we pulled away for the last time from the house that will forever be intrinsically linked for me to my grandparents, I couldn't help but see them in the other place I will always remember them. Just as familiar and precious to me, because I saw it so many times in the first nineteen years of my life: the two of them standing framed in the door together waving goodbye as we drove down the street.
I got back to LA today. It's been a very long day having begun at 4:45am EST and it's not going to end till probably 1 or 2 am EST. Last night, I was at the Topsfield Fair with Beth and now I'm back in LA jumping right back into the craziness that has become my life. Not that that is a bad thing...I just think I have a little bit too much going on right now and I need to chill a bit or I'm going to have a nervous breakdown before the end of the month.
On Saturday we went to my grandparent's old house to meet up with my aunt Judy, cousin Amy, her husband Nick, and their kids to move the washer and dryer out because the washer was going to my other grandmother's house and the dryer (GASP) was going to my parent's house. Not to replace a dryer mind you, but to be the very first dryer ever to enter the premises. I'm pretty excited about it even though I don't really do laundry there anymore, I guess I'm excited for my parents. Call waiting, digital cable, a flat panel TV (which they actually got by accident) and a dryer all in one year! Craziness.
The trip to my grandparent's house was actually a fairly significant experience, and not just because I had to get up at 6am to go move large heavy appliances during my vacation. It was probably the last time I will ever be in that house. It has tentatively been sold. So this was kind of a final goodbye to my grandparents on my dad's side.
It was surreal to walk through the empty house. All the sea-foam green carpeting, on which I first learned the basics of static electricity and its many uses in torturing my sister, is gone save for the stairs. It used to run throughout the house. Now everything seems cavernous. It's all shining hardwood floors and repainted walls. Steps echo through the space with nothing to absorb the noise. I found myself repopulating the rooms with the furniture and decorations I had always known growing up. The piano covered in pictures of my aunt, cousin, parents, sister, and me. Including the eighth grade photo in which the reflection of the photographer's umbrella in my glasses coupled with my glazed look makes it look like I'm about to experience an alien abduction. Perhaps the crown jewel of my awkward decade.
The artificial Christmas tree with all the antique ornaments. The many places that candy could always be found throughout the house. The loon paraphernalia that my grandfather was showered with after expressing passing interest in the bird he associated with relaxing vacations in Maine. Decorative plates and Hummel figurines. Details of the grain of the dining room table and the ice cream bowls. They came flooding back to me. Little things I hadn't thought about in years.
I was always fascinated by the eaves upstairs. I used to look in through the little white doors fascinated by the fact there was a "secret" tunnel from one side of the house to the other. I was tempted to crawl in now that the tunnel was empty and satisfy my 9 year old self's desire for adventure and secret passages...alas on closer inspection, with the boxes not blocking it, I realized that even 9 year old me would have been hard pressed to squeeze through the narrowest point.
My father's basement room still bears all the markings of a teenage boy in the 60's, vintage stickers from radio stations, bands, and places he worked that no longer exist adorn windows doors and walls. That was the first place I ever played darts, with real sharp metal projectiles. Mostly they got stuck in the wall. It was also one of the first places that it ever occurred to me that my father had existed before I came along and that perhaps there was more to my parents than my sister and I were aware of.
Even now, years after either of my grandparents lived in the house, and over a year after my grandmother's death, the house still smells the same. I've decided it's the wooden hearth in the living room that does it. Oak or cedar, I'm not at all sure, but that's what gives it that specific welcoming smell. It's like a cottage in the woods. Maybe I just associate it with them.
Mostly, I picture them in the house. My grandfather standing at the kitchen sink washing the dishes with a towel over his shoulder like he did after every single meal I ever ate there. My grandmother sitting at the table clipping coupons and chatting about the latest goings on at the church or down the street, while Days of Our Lives played out in the background. Or the two of them sitting in their chairs at one end of their huge living room observing all the activity at the holidays, like a suburban royal court.
Right before I left for Europe my sophomore year I was saying goodbye to both of them and they were sitting in their living room thrones. My grandmother had just started using her soon to be routine farewell of "I hope we're here when you get back," but at the time it still had a frightening impact. That Sunday when we said our farewells I decided on the spot to forgo the usual handshake and hugged my startled grandfather for the first time in years. He took it in stride and hugged back as if I hadn't ever stopped.
As I stood in the den on Saturday, the room I probably spent the most time in as a child, and placed the easy chair and couch in my mind, I looked out the window at the old fashioned lamp post by the driveway. Gone is the little sign that said "Pearson" and the little metal goldfinch that was fixed, forever perched, on top of it looking as though it had either just landed or was just about to take off. I was fascinated by that bird for some reason. All around that lamp the lawn that my grandfather so meticulously cared for for so long was scattered with yellow leaves that were continuing to rain down from the tree just beyond the sidewalk.
After the moving was done I went and joined the rest of my family in the only room that still has its furniture, the breezeway. The room where we all spent countless summer evenings and the place where, at the end of every visit, we always, inevitably said goodbye. On Saturday we sat on the same couches that have been there for as long as I can remember. The only thing absent was the sound of the numerous wind chimes that used to hang there. My cousin Amy's daughters Lindsey and Michelle were running through the house while she and I each fed one of her newborn twin sons their bottles. The twins, Paul and Anthony, at two weeks old were each still small enough to hold in one hand. They are the first in four generations who won't ever spend the night in that house, and the first who never got to meet either of my grandparents.
As we pulled away for the last time from the house that will forever be intrinsically linked for me to my grandparents, I couldn't help but see them in the other place I will always remember them. Just as familiar and precious to me, because I saw it so many times in the first nineteen years of my life: the two of them standing framed in the door together waving goodbye as we drove down the street.
posted by Chris at 3:57 PM
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