Today is the last day my parents’ house will be my parents’ house. Tomorrow someone new will close on being the owner. It’s sad that none of us will have a place in my family’s land. My heart breaks a little for us all, echoing right back into the beyond to my grandmother and mother watching us shake a hand and walk away from their heritage.
I realize this is the first house that I felt a parent’s love in. This is the only home I watched my parents be grandparents to my babies in. This was even our actual home for a few months, when Gwenyvere and Fiona were old enough to walk and talk and young enough to bite. And Shea curled up large in my belly.
There are so many memories filling this now empty house. I can still see the floor and my diapered babies covered in spaghetti sauce and syrup from the frenchy toast their Mema made. Here’s Shea riding his Grampa’s shoulders to get another popsicle, his curls soft and light. Here’s Grampa being a horsey to Fiona and Shea as Gwenyvere curls by my side. Here’s Shea zipping his tricycle from end to end slurping popsicle juice from its plastic. There’s the bed I slept in. Here’s the bed I lay on beside my mother, watching movies to the sounds of her snores, wishing I could shift the baby inside me to the side to safely make way for a beer to endure her bossiness.
Here is my sister’s knee next to mine as we wrap piles of my mother’s boxes, watching “A Christmas Story.” Here’s the peanut butter jars striped with my father’s fingers. There’s my mother standing at the sink, looking out the window like her mother used to. And I watch her as she watched her mother, wondering what she is seeing. Here is my father, listening to Penn State, writing his “book” where my Nana used to sleep, and where my niece’s bunny will later hop freely.
There’s Nana holding her namesake, drool spilling with every syllable as I cringe, hands out. There’s Grampa falling asleep as Shea leaks from his arms, and I catch him inches from the floor. There’s Mema holding Shea in her arms rocking him back and forth back and forth as the ambulance EMTs take my anxious father out on a stretcher. She shushes me as I race in purple and pudgy, her only concern that her baby does not wake.
Here’s Shea two years later, rushing in every time to declare “Mema, Mema, I here now!” as he presents himself in front of her wheelchair, to be pulled onto her lap to play with the windpipe sized legos I forbade.
There’s Gwenyvere standing in a box chin tilted up in defiance at her father. There we are in the backyard, sitting under the huge apple tree, my stomach full of Shea. Gwenyvere sits peaceful on what’s left of my lap sucking her fingers, as Fiona plows her off with a two arm slow motion shove declaring, “MINE!” She replaces her--on my lap, thumb in mouth, my hair twisting in her fingers, triumphant.
There I am, no babies, singing while my new husband plays guitar at our wedding reception in the backyard under the same sprawling tree. A new scar upon my face, I am humbled. And our babies are just a dream.
Dark is now falling, my time is almost up. This house, this house, was full of love, and food, and blaring TV, and squeals of children, and Christmas trees dwarfed by presents. The heart of it is grandparents. It’s my mother’s indulgent extravagences; it’s my father’s indulgent indulgences. In this house, they were the loving parents I had longed for, as grandparents.
***
I can see you now, sitting by the Halloween door, waiting for us all with your giant candy bowls in your witchy mask, Batman’s cape...watching for your babies to run to you, hands out. Here they all come, all your babies, they are here now, missing you both. Here we are, your children, signing off.
The sky is darkening and Shea awaits me with his girl down by the graveyard. Where once we played as children, and now we whisper to you. Thank you for your love, thank you for your help, thank you for your house. It’s time to go. We’ll take you with us. Watch for us.
