Traveling. Through Time & Otherwise

This weekend my youngest uncle turned 50. His wife sent us an invitation to his surprise party a few months back, and after some planning, we decided we could swing it, even though the party fell on Sunday evening. And it was 3+ hours away. And that neither of my sisters could come. But, my uncle has never forgotten a birthday, a baby shower, an anniversary. We had the time. We had to go.

My aunt lives in a lovely little Shaker style home in upstate New York. She offered up her guest suite to me and my little family for the night of the party. She lives  in the same neighborhood that I had visited on countless occasions as a child. It was around the corner from my grandparent’s house. The house that I spent my childhood in, exploring the secret passageways, the closets full of my grandmother’s clothes, the corners of my grandfather’s office that smelled like cologne and leather. The house where I swam in the pool, went sledding in the yard, where I sat with my mother and my grandma while they drank gin & tonics and talked about women whose names I remember, but faces I never saw. My sister E and I made forts in the massive pine trees and took bites out of the crab apples in the front yard, while my mother bottle fed my now 27 year- old sister. It was home. I vividly remember the morning light that came in through the windows of the trundle bed room we slept in all of those years. I remember booking it past the closet at the top of the stairs because I was sure it held the bodies of the murdered wives of Bluebeard. Thanks for telling us that one, grandma. I remember where my grandpa kept the chips, and where my then- teenage uncle hid his stash of Yoohoo.

My grandmother died in April of 1994. I was 16.  My grandfather to follow in the fall of 2000, right before my 23rd birthday. The house was cleaned out, my memories shoved into boxes, divvied up between relatives, the remains to be sold at estate sales.  It was awful.

This weekend I went back to the house. I didn’t have the guts to go in, but I talked about doing it. I sat in the car and looked at the driveway where my parents had parked so many times, the pool (now filled in), and the hill where we would sled on shiny plastic sheets. Back then, I would have sworn that hill was on a 45 degree angle and was a half mile long. And I cried in the car. My two year old comforting me from the back seat “Don cry, mama. Don cry.”

After I pulled myself together, we drove down the street to the elementary school playground. It was the same playground my parents had taken me to as a little girl, and here I was chasing my own daughter there. It was a bittersweet feeling, being back  and not having my grandparents there, but yet I had a whole new family to enjoy. And that I was not the little girl this time. Growing up is a funny thing.

I miss my grandparents desperately. I see things in my daughter that remind me of them, and I know that they would have loved the hell out of her. My grandma always really loved that she had granddaughters to dress up, bring to the beauty parlor, and spoil. I once watched an episode of Long Island Medium (I love that show. Quit your judgin’) where a woman had her mother die before the birth of her first grandchild. And the Medium said “Your mother held her in heaven and passed her down to you”, and I think about that a lot when I get sad that they never met her. Maybe they did…..