Family Treasures

On the drive up here I thought about how miserable this was going to be. I always enjoyed going to Grandma's house, meeting my cousins, sitting around the dining room table eating dinner with the family, sharing exaggerated stories about all the things that had happened to one another since last we met. This time was different. When we arrived, my aunt and uncle greeted mom and dad and walked together into the house. I lingered, remembering all the times as a child I would jump from the car, run up the front porch stairs, and shout, "Grandma! Grandma! We're here."

The chestnut trees still litter the ground with their autumn harvest. When I was young, I would try roasting them in the fireplace like Nat King Cole told us to. Each Christmas they found their way into the house onto strings decorating the walls wishing good tidings to all who entered.

The ivy, still covering the front yard, weaves its lush, emerald carpet along the ground up the latticework onto the front porch. Perhaps in one more year, and with a little extra effort, the woods will reclaim the porch. How filthy I would get belly crawling around its underside, a world of dark and moving creatures. Little boys explore the creepiest things.

The stairs groan their age under my feet. The porch needs painting, as does the rest of the house. A carpet covers the front hallway that takes you inside. On the left the old desk, looking like a Chinese puzzle chest, sits in the den. Like any child, I whiled away the hours in front of it exploring its nooks and crannies. I am told it belonged to the grandfather I never knew. To the right the living room sits dark and empty. The shades are pulled down and the couches and chairs are covered. At the far end of the living room sits the sun porch, long ago converted into a sitting room, where, in the dark, we watched TV on an ancient black and white television.
Off in the dining room I hear a voice. "I want this lamp, that picture, and the water pitcher in the corner along with its stand," says a cousin, speaking out of turn. For a moment, I think I hear Grandma chuckling in the sitting room. Is she sitting in her favorite rocking chair, smoking a Chesterfield, watching Jack Parr?

Raised voices interfere.

No one smoked a cigarette the way Grandma did. She would put it in her mouth, and there it would stay until finished. She never took it out of her mouth, not for anything. She talked with it in her mouth, wheezed with it in her mouth, cooked with it in her mouth, cleaned with it in her mouth. Slowly, with each new breath, a little more tobacco would surrender to ash, until the entire cigarette was smoked down to the filter. There it would sit in Grandma's mouth, one cigarette-long ash waiting for proper disposal. Eventually, wheezing or coughing scattered the ash over her dress. Each year Emphysema claimed a little more of Grandma.

"I think your daughter is asking for too much," an aunt intrudes on the memory. The stairs to the basement take me away from the distraction.

The basement was my favorite place to hide. A good game of hide and seek deserved a good hiding place, and the basement had more than its fair share. And it was dark too. It  ran the length and width of the house. Clotheslines ran from corner to corner, crisscrossing in the middle. You never knew what evil lurked behind a hanging blanket or sheet -- Dungeons and Dragons in a real dungeon. The coal-burning furnace sits against the wall that runs along the driveway. The shovel and coal in the coal bin still stand at the ready to keep a cold night out. My mom never could keep me clean in that house. During the day the sun shines down the coal shoot bathing a small section of the basement in swaths of fractured light. I shovel coal into the furnace one last time.

In the corner stands the washing machine that hasn't worked since before I can remember. It's so old and different that it looks alien. In the rear of the basement, where the sun doesn't reach, resides the netherland, where creatures of the dark spawn damp, dark nightmares. Broken artifacts from an era gone by litter the basement floor, put there by legendary family members. I wonder what treasures will be seized down here before the day is out.

I return upstairs and walk into the kitchen. The men would watch football in the sitting room, while their wives hustled in and out of the pantry retrieving this, putting away that, while preparing dinner. Grandma looked regal in front of the stove barking orders to daughters to get this and retrieve that. Little cowboys chased little Indians through the pantry’s swinging door out into the backyard. Now my uncle sits alone, bent over, cleaning his glasses. He holds them in one hand, while he rubs a tissue in ever increasing circles over a lens with the other. "Had to get away from it for a while," he says to me. I know. His daughter is the one staking claims.

The stairs bring me to the second floor. Five bedrooms circle an anteroom. Grandma's room is immediately to my right. It is decorated with baubles and trinkets acquired over a lifetime. Combs and brushes sit on the dresser alongside an ancient handheld mirror. The mirror captured the reflections of many generations. Once it was heavy and sturdy, made to last for more than a lifetime. Many things were made to outlast a lifetime at one time. Now it is old and fragile, and much of the mirror’s backing has flaked off from its base. I guess even the strongest whither away under the influence of time.

Lace curtains dress the windows, a slight reminder of youthful femininity, long since faded. The windows distort the view. The glass is much thicker on bottom than top, a reminder that all things succumb to the forces of gravity and time.

The next room is the sewing room. Needles and pins embedded in pincushions lie around. Thimbles standing at attention line the shelves gathering dust like forgotten toy soldiers. An iron-fisted sewing machine sits on its own little table by the window. Often I'd nap on the bed, the sun's rays warming me through the window panes. The old phone sits on top of the nightstand next to the bed. Often Grandma scolded me for listening to the neighbors spread town gossip over the party line. I never understood why. What good was a party line if you couldn’t listen to gossip?

All the rooms whisper loneliness to me; they haven't been visited in such a long time. The whispers aren't new. I spent a little of my childhood growing up in this house imagining whispers when I was alone. Maybe the spirits of ancestors live in the walls of this old house, not to haunt, but to remind.

The attic occupies the top floor. Like the basement, it runs the length and width of the house. It is not for the meek. It definitely requires a daytime visit. With eyes wide in wonder, I performed anthropological digs in trunks and baskets, cataloging and annotating the lives of my great-great-greats. Letters from one family member to another are always the most revealing. Letters written in German during a previous century told of a life very different from my own.

During the day the attic was filled with the hum of history. But when night fell, I closed the door to the attic stairs, my child's imagination running wild inventing ethereal creatures of the night. All kinds of scary things went on in the attic after everyone went to bed. The wind would howl, the roof would creak, and I would lay awake waiting for something to happen. Each night creatures teased and taunted but never showed themselves.

I hear my name called. My father is telling me we are leaving. Silently we fill the car. No one talks as we back out of the driveway and drive down the road past new, shiny condos. As we turn onto the highway, my mother tells me that some things will be distributed among family, and the rest will be sold with the house. The land is valuable and money is easier to share than memories.