The Legacy of Home

It was only August, but it already felt like Summer’s end. The heat had broken; maybe it was the thunderstorm of tears I had wept which had tempered the humidity and made the air less oppressive, as if the world were giving me some comfort. My eyes sizzled at the thought, threatening to begin bubbling pools again. I blinked fiercely, urging them silently to settle themselves. They obeyed, this time, and I sighed in relief. I did not want my eyes blurry as I traveled the tree arched mountain pass, her road ways curving up like a sanguine river. It was so peaceful, so familiar, and I cherished the sun sparkling through the emerald leaves and the smell of the sunlight toasting the onion grass as I drove onward towards home.

It wasn’t the type of home you would probably think of in the traditional sense. Most people, when they mention they are going home, are speaking of a home that they grew up in, or the town that they lived in most of their life. I had neither of those things. My life as a Navy brat meant that my childhood was spent crossing state lines, and even moving to other countries – a rotation of starting over every four years that became a fun game of new adventures. So home became my Nana and Pops’ house in Charlottesville; a small modest home with white siding and black shutters, a gravel driveway, and a large backyard where kids and dogs could run and play and picnic. It’s where we would gather, as often as we could, and we’d cram into the dining room fighting over Nana’s fresh made popcorn to go with our home grown tomato sandwiches, the price of which would be making and canning the grape jelly from all the grapes we’d picked that morning.

My car crunched over the graveled ground – the sound so familiar I felt a “welcome home” echo deep in my bones. The front door was open the way it always was when company was expected, but the sunlight showed the reflection of the beautiful day outside, and in those moments it was keeping the reality away. I retrieved my sweet sleeping newborn daughter from the backseat and felt my heart lurch as if slipping gears, the sting of tears pull at the edges of my eyes once more. She would never know this place as I had known it, and she would never know him.

Inside we were wrapped in hugs, first by my mom and dad who had made a much longer trip than just across the mountain, and then by my Nana, who looked smaller than I had ever seen her – the bright blue of her eyes dulled and her shoulders weary. Loss never just takes a person, it takes it’s toll with grief, and worry, and to-do lists no one truly wants to manage. I handed Maezie to them and watched the sweetness of new life become a gift for everyone. They passed her around, holding joy made tangible, and I saw it ease the pain ever so slightly. New life, new love, and new memories were right there in a floral onesie and a large pink bow, sleeping soundly.

As Maezie napped my mom filled me in on the plan for Nana to move in with them in St. Louis, that they would be emptying the house, and that all the grand children, and great grands would be taking parts of their inherited family treasures with them now, in fact most of them. I had honestly known this was coming, but I cannot say that I was truly prepared for it.

As I walked the rooms with them, looking at things memories flooded me. The flower patterned spoons that were used for morning cereal. The deep freezer in the basement where we would half-climb down in to find ice cream. The couch where we would carve out space in front of a small TV to play endless games of Mario Bros. or to watch Nickelodeon cartoons in the summer. The small and only bathroom where we would beg others to hurry up cause we needed to go! The counters where we made rolls for thanksgiving, and grape jam in the summer. But the room that hit me the hardest was the man-cave space in the basement where my Pops made his fishing lures.

Wrapped in the cool concrete of the underground, paneled with wood and pegboard, an L shaped countertop of alchemy stood, and if you were quiet, and you didn’t ask too many questions, you were allowed to sit and watch and listen. His large but steady hands would melt metal and pour it into small casts that held fish hooks until it hardened and he'd pop them out, as if twisting an ice cube tray, and they were ready to be painted. He’d dip them in the most obnoxious colors – the brightest yellows, the sharpest neon greens, and give them eyes of black with thin red rimmed white centers. If I close my eyes I think I can still smell the poignant nail polish varnish of it, as if a toddler had gotten into a nail salon and poured out every bottle to play with. While those dried, he’d take some that had been painted already, and he’d begin making magic, pulling rubber and deer tails and feathers, twisting and knotting until they looked like the prettiest most exotic bug you ever saw. Sometimes he’d add blades – my favorite were the hammered copper ones that danced the light so easily around the room and looked well loved already. They seemed the most fitting as he had already put so much love into making them.

I let the tears come as we looked around this room, and I picked out some lures to call my own, letting my fingers touch the tools that he would never touch again. I put them in an old tool box with some old craftsmen screwdrivers, the good kind that will last a lifetime that they don’t make anymore, making sure that Maezie would have one too, wanting her to be able to hold on to something that had been his.

Later that afternoon I rocked her in the living room in his favorite burgundy velvet chair, the one where he’d peel back the lace curtains just so to watch the neighbors walk by, to watch the squirrels squabble in the street, or to catch the glimpse of a cardinal finding it’s supper in the front yard. We shared stories of him, how he’d always be slipping us grandkids money behind our parents back with a “don’t go spending all that in one place now, ya here?”. One time it wasn’t even money, he’d slipped me a necklace in a golden corral parking lot that had a lizard on it, his favorite nickname for me. I’d hated that nickname but I wore that necklace with pride, and I twirled it like a talisman around my finger as we reminisced.

Leaving that day was the hardest time I have ever left a place. My Nana was going to be moving, the house was going to be going up for sale, and that semblance of home that I had clung on to my entire life was going to be gone. But more than that, my Pops, who loved so quietly and often with only his presence, was gone too.

As my tires crunch over the gravel, this time those old stones whispered "goodbye", and I honked the traditional three honks to signal I was pulling away. Three honks - one for "I", one for "Love", and one for "You", and the door stayed open until after I pulled away to retrace the mountain pass towards the house I am now building into a home for my children. Now, every time I see the fishing lures I have framed, hanging in my office, or I use my screwdriver to change the batteries in my children’s toys, or I wear the lizard charm necklace, every time I make grape jam, or I slip my children money when their dad isn’t looking and tell them to go get ice cream from the pool’s snack shack, I know that his legacy, and his memory, and my home, lives on.