Bad dream
Last night I woke up bawling. Blah. I dreamt that I was in Omaha with mini-me. We went to the house grandma and grandpa lived in for more than 40 years, the house I grew up in, and the young family living there now let us come in and look around. I was sharing stories with them about all my warm & loving memories about every nook and cranny of that house. I was in tears already when I woke up.
I told them about the carpet in the living room when I was young, and grandpa’s big recliner. How heart-wrenching it was to knock on their front door, because grandma and grandpa always had people come to the back/side door into the kitchen instead. I told them about grandma’s kitchen, what a good cook she was, how her kitchen was always warm and welcoming, how visitors would sit around her kitchen table… I told them about my bedroom, in what is now the dining room. It had a door in the doorway to the kitchen, back then. I’d wake up and crawl out of bed when it was still pitch dark out, and I’d sit with grandpa at the kitchen table while grandma made his lunch, and after seeing him off to work I’d go back to bed. The kitchen didn’t have the pretty carpet then. It had a dark yellow linoleum that would make a person cringe today to see it, but I loved the pattern as a child. I loved the hard wood floor in my bedroom, that was now carpeted. I told them about the summer the air conditioner broke, and no one could get my bedroom windows open because they were painted shut. Grandpa could, though. He could do anything.
We walked further down the hallway and into the second bedroom. It was grandpa’s, while grandma was still alive. They loved each other deeply, but with her oxygen tank and all he couldn’t sleep with her… too loud. But they each kept an 8x10 of the other on their dressers. When we were all younger, and grandpa still slept with grandma, my older brothers shared that spare room next door to mine. Across the hall in grandma’s room, I told them about napping with her after kindergarten. We’d spoon with one another, and I loved looking at the way the curtains hung on the rods in there. I loved how light it was when they were open, and how dark and cozy when they were closed.
In the back yard, I showed them where grandma’s strawberry patch had been years ago. In her healthier years, she loved to work in the garden and had the most gorgeous tulips every year. My brothers and I use to catch snails behind the shed. And on the upper level, I showed them the tree grandma and grandpa planted the year they moved in. Grandpa kept his vegetable garden on most of the rest of the top level of the back yard. My brothers and I would pick fresh rhubarb, and dip it in sugar to eat it. For Halloween our pumpkins were always straight off his vine. And his tomatoes were delicious, but as a kid I never appreciated that. I can still see them ripening in the kitchen window sills. I showed them where the neighbor used to have a cherry tree, and my brothers and I would climb on top of the swing set we used to have to pick fresh cherries off the branches that grew over the fence. Grandma use to sunbathe out back… she was fanatical about it! When I was about mini-me’s age, I loved laying out in the sun with her.
On the stairs to the basement, I stopped halfway down. One year the dryer broke. We pulled out the old-fashioned ringer to dry the clothes from the washer (until the dryer could be replaced). I was too young to be of help, so I sat half way down the stairs and watched. Grandma fed the clothes through while grandpa cranked. There were clothes lines the length of the laundry room, where for all my life grandma would hang the dry clothes up until she was ready to take them up to the closets. The shower in the basement was fairly recent… only 15 years or so old. Grandma got too old to easily sit in a bath, and the shower was just easier for her, so grandpa installed it. There was a 2nd refrigerator down there as long as I can remember, and an upright freezer. I or my brothers were constantly being sent down to the basement for this or that from the fridge or freezer.
The furnace use to frighten me… I’d run by it to get to the door to the rec room. My brothers and I use to play down there for hours and hours. The pantry was in there, where we’d go during tornadoes. In the tornados of ’75, I was too hysterical to handle. The only way they could calm me was to let me out of the pantry to sit with grandma on the small spare bed in the rec room. Any time she tried to get up to turn up the volume on the tv or radio (remote control, what’s that?) I’d start screaming again and she’d rush back to calm me. The linoleum tile was in a pattern of red-speckled white tiles and white-speckled red tiles. We’d pretend the red ones were lava and couldn’t be touched.
When I was a child, the giant closet in the rec room scared the hell out of me. It was huge and dark and creepy, full of cob webs and monsters. As an adult, I love that closet. It was full of memories and knickknacks and photos and memorabilia and love.
There were hooks on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, where coats were hung. It was on the floor there that we put bread bags on our feet before slipping into galoshes to play in the snow. And it was there that our wet things were taken off, so we didn’t ruin grandma’s clean house!
Beside the hooks was the door to the garage… It makes a certain sound, to open and close that door, and the screen door with it. That sound moves me in ways I can’t explain. That sound is grandpa home from work. It is going out to the car to go to church, and all the donuts and kool-aid a Presbyterian can eat, or going to pick up grandma from bingo. It is a safe place to stand beside grandpa and thunderstorms outside. It is going out to watch grandpa in his workshop. We went through that door last night, and saw the garage. Clean and tidy and perfect. A ladder hanging along one wall for cleaning gutters. Fishing rods on end in the front corner. Snow shovels for clearing the driveway. Rakes and hoes and shovels for yard work. I told them about the year that grandpa installed the opener, and how before that year, he would pull into the driveway and grandma would get out of the car. She’d walk up to the door in rain or shine, day or night, with her key ring that had a tiny “Harry Husker” figure on it, and open up the door so he could drive in.
The center of the garage was the broad work-table across the width of the room, opposite the big garage door. There, grandpa had his tools in such dignified order it defies description. Next to the table was a tall yellow vinyl chair with a built in step stool in the bottom. I’d flip out the steps so I could climb up onto the chair to watch him. He always welcomed my presence, or at least made me FEEL welcomed. He was always smiling and joking. But always serious about safety and keeping his tools in order. He could make or do anything on that work-table. And I could sit for hours and hours and HOURS just watching him. In the larger blueprint of the house, that work-table was the back left little corner of the bottom basement level. But it has always been and will ALWAYS be, the very heart of the house in my mind.
It was in telling the young family about grandpa’s work space that I woke up crying. Bawling really, though I tried to contain it.
