Grandma's House

The highway that descended down out of the foothills into the Yakima Valley was nearly deserted even though it was mid-afternoon. The late December sky had turned a slate gray to signal an oncoming snow storm. My car moved along easily, occasionally side slipping on a patch of black ice, but nothing dangerous. I'd driven this road many times over the years.

At the Alderman Horse Farm the highway leveled out and ran pin-straight all the way to the cross roads. No one in the car spoke. My younger sister, Mary, was lost in her own thoughts in the back seat. Her husband, Grant, sat beside me in the passenger seat and stared out at the frozen fields as they passed by. My own mind was filled with visions of times past as I drove the road I'd driven so many times before.

The momentary stop at the crossroads yielded a short wait for a tanker truck then a dog leg to the right onto Chestnut Street. I followed the street all the way to where Chestnut ended at the gravel road and there, on the corner sat the old house. I stopped the car for a moment as I looked at the old house. It seemed older and more run down than I could remember. The paint on the clapboards was peeled. The front porch seemed to sag with its age.

"Go on, Jenn. We might as well get it over with," Mary said from the back.

I turned left on the gravel road and into the drive at the rear of the house. My cousin, Steve, was already there. I recognized his jeep. And there was a Mercedes I thought must belong to cousin Richard. Charlie and the rest might have been around the block at Aunt Rosie's house. But I was sure they were here someplace.

As I opened the car door, the cold seemed to seep into my bones. It was a coldness that almost ached. But I knew it wasn't just the cold. It was the feeling of death and loss.

In the dining room Steve and his sister Suzi sat at the old, round, oak table drinking coffee. I greeted them. Suzi came to me an we hugged. The tears were very close. After a wave to Richard I went to the kitchen an poured a cup of coffee from the old coffee pot on the old stove and went outside to sit on the old back porch with my memories. I knew the funeral would be in an hour or so. It seemed like a sad ending, two old, cold dead people lowered into the cold, frozen earth.

There on the back porch of my grand parents old house, I could plainly see the Rose of Sharon bush that had grown there next to the gravel road for as long as I could remember. Oh, it was the largest one I've ever seen. I was told Grandma planted it when the house was bought, some sixty odd years before. She tended that bush like her child and it always grew the finest deep pink flowers with dark red centers year after year without fail.

My mind drifted back to my childhood when I sat in the cool shade of the old Black Locus tree near that bush and watched the emerald green humming birds feed on those flowers. The tiny birds darted here and there then paused, wings moving so fast I couldn't see them. I watched as they dipped their long beaks into the fragrant nectar at the heart of the flowers, then flew away only to return to feed again.

Why was I remembering this now? Winter had set in leaving the bush bare. Now there was no need for shade against the cold, stark gray clouded sky with an occasional snow flake drifting here and there in preparation of a coming storm. Shivering, I knew there would be a fresh carpet of snow by morning.

But sitting there my mind still insisted on drifting back to those summers when I was young. At times I could even hear Grandma yelling from the porch where I now sat, "You kids. Get in here. It's time to eat. And leave that dog out there. She don't need to come in." And we would come running from out behind the shed where we'd been playing, my sisters and I. Running because we could already taste Grandma's fried chicken that nobody could duplicate. And the sweet corn and mashed potatoes and white gravy. Sitting here now I could almost taste that meal. It was always hot and heavily peppered just the way Grandpa liked it.

There around the old, round, oak table my ma sat with Grandpa talking about the cousins and aunts and uncles back in the old country that we kids never knew.

"No, Violet, Ian was hanged years ago. You must be thinking of Freddy. That's your Aunt Mattie's son," he was saying. These were all people who were a part of us we'd never seen and never would. Even now I can't really put together who was who and who belonged to who. Or who was in Cork and who was back in Belfast. Sometimes I would see letters postmarked from Ulster or Dublin addressed to Grandpa lying on Grandma's old sideboard. When he saw that I'd noticed them he'd snatch them up and put them away someplace never to be shown to anyone.

And later, Grandpa would sit in his big easy chair, smoke his cigarettes and sip his whiskey from his glass. His eyes would drift off into another place, another time long ago. And we always knew he was thinking about the old country. If you spoke to him he was too far away to hear.

Once I came into the house and Grandpa was sitting in his chair with one of the letters staring off, a tear making a shiny rivulet down his cheek. I spoke to him but he could not hear. That was the only time I ever saw that tough, strong old man cry.

I've always tried to be like I remember him. His back was always straight. He was tough but kind to us. A fighter all his life with a tenderness buried so deep one would not even know it was there unless you really knew and loved him. He was a voice of authority and a stable mountain in the midst of the rumbling chaos of kids and dogs.

And what of Grandma? I know I could never be like her. She was staid and stoic. She was always there in the house, never complaining and never wanting much more than she had. And there was the constant reminder of the Rose of Sharon bush. The one unchanging thing in lives that spanned most of 90 years. That bush grew and flourished like the family that sprang from her. Looking at the bare limbs now it seemed to me to be an undying symbol of those two old people. That bush was planted in their youth and grew and grew and blossomed year after year into maturity. And now as I looked at it all it could see was how cold and bare and dead it was, just like they were.

But there is a difference. Next spring that bush will regenerate as it has all these years, grow new leaves and blossom its pink flowers for the humming birds again. I can only hope Grandma and Grandpa will have regenerated someplace together again. Starting anew and continuing on together. That is my hope for them and all I have left to offer.