The other day while perusing facebook , a picture posted by my son of what appeared to be a filthy, uncared for, even abandoned old kitchen made me think, oh my, where in the world is he?! Why did he take a picture of that?! In a fraction of a second that thought combined with knowing he was back visiting our home town, became the realization of what I was seeing, what his picture was showing, our house, the place that he and I once called home.
I was immediately shocked and sick with disbelief, followed with overwhelming sadness as I stared at what was left of my once beautiful little kitchen, the one room I still tell about because to me it was just perfect, then and now still my favorite of any room I’ve ever been able to call mine.
I looked at that picture and saw with my eyes the vaguely familiar; combing every square inch I recalled what it looked like before this.
I ate there as a child at a pink Formica table when it was my Grandma’s kitchen. She made lunch sandwiches spread with a layer of butter and jam, and topped lunch off with peanut shaped cookies or butter cookies with the hole in the middle that fit on my finger, or windmill cookies for desert, and milk in a jam jar glass the perfect size for small hands. Some evenings when my whole family visited, Grandma would cut slices of Sara Lee chocolate cake from its pinched foil tray and we all together ate at that pink table.
It was the kitchen of the house that Grandpa built with his own hands, sweat and determination, for his young family. It was his vision and provision for them. The lumber for that house was salvaged from another, dismantled board by board when that house’s purpose was completed, when its family had grown, and moved on.
My Dad and his brothers tell of their memories removing old nails preparing the boards for their new assignment, the very modest new 2 bedroom home of old wood. All 3 brothers would share one of those small bedrooms until they were grown to men. Grandpa and Grandma would live the rest of their life together, right there.
Grandpa farmed using his old tractor, up before dawn. He wore a fedora hat and a sweater with patch elbows and smoked a pipe. Grandma ironed, wearing her apron, sprinkling the clothes with a pop bottle sprinkler. She wore silver framed cat eye glasses and thin white bobby socks; she carried a hankie and a skeleton key with a string on her wrist or in her apron pocket. A cuckoo clock could be heard keeping time in the living room.
That kitchen became my kitchen for several years when my own children were small. We ate at the same pink Formica table, on the same pink vinyl upholstered chairs, placed in the same spot of the pink and black checked tile floor that I scrubbed and waxed on hands and knees. I washed my dishes where Grandma washed hers, at the white porcelain one piece sink and counter that topped the white metal cabinets. The same little panda bear salt shaker that graced the shelf of Grandma’s kitchen when I was a child enamored with it, lent charm to mine. My babies chewed on teether cookies while their big brothers dipped cookies in milk, just like I had years before in that same space that had changed so little, and yet so very very much.
In my melancholy Ecclesiastical mood I am socked in the stomach and shot to the heart with wishes. I wish we had never sold that house. I wish that we had had the foresight to know what a gem it was and would be to future family members. I wish I could have it back to do better. I wish there was a way to restore what is un-restorable. I wish I’d had enough money that money would not have been a deciding factor. Mostly, I wish I had known the dreams and stories of the builders of that house, my grandparents, my Dad and uncles as boys, every last detail because they mattered to me, then and now still. I wish I could say great care has been taken to preserve what they built, in their honor. I wish I had at least taken more pictures.
All houses crumble, even the palaces of great kings lie in ruin eventually. So will mine. So will my children’s should time continue its countdown.
We have only this, now, and I can say with Solomon, “He has made everything beautiful in its time, also He has put eternity in their hearts, I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives…every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor-it is the gift of God. I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it. And nothing taken from it…and God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:11-15)
My past has been beautiful in its time, that time precious to this time.
I remember, with overwhelming gratitude for it.
P.J.
Poems of my grandparents written October 3 and 5, 2001
~Maybelle~
What I remember fondly
of youth full days
Point often to her
in many simple ways
Like a big bottle of pop
on a Sunday afternoon
Or a curvy bottle
of Cotillion perfume
Butter and jam sandwiches
cut in half
“Horse tails” sticking up
out of the grass
A flowery apron
and a springy hair band
A hankie or tissue
clutched in her hand
Dolly Madison dolls
from around the world
A necklace and bracelet
in rows of pink pearls
Sara Lee chocolate cake,
a special treat
Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson
on late night TV
Pretty glass doorknobs
on doors with keyholes
Where the skeleton key tied on
a white string goes
The cuckoo clock, knick-knacks
and jam jar glasses
Memories that sweeten
as more time passes
Back then it was our normal,
now it is nostalgic
But yesterdays with Grandma
still work magic
P.J.
~Donald~
Its 4:00 a.m.,
dawn still slumbers
His day has begun
despite the clocks numbers
That built-in alarm rings out,
work to be done
Daylight is burnin’,
get a move on son
Denim dungarees
and a plaid cotton shirt
And a cap to begin
another day’s work
There’s earth to till,
seeds to sow
The tractor in the barn
is rarin’ to go
He built their little house
by the sweat of his brow
His boys helped,
he showed them how
Peonies, lilacs,
apples and pears
Grapevines and rhubarb
all grew there
Work at the plant
earned him a wage
From Ford Motorcars
‘till retirement age
There was camping and fishing
amongst dragon flies
Skimming lakeside
under sunny skies
He raised up his boys
and cared for his wife
With hard work and commitment
all of his life
My mind’s eye
still pictures him there
In the old living room
in his favorite chair
I wish back then I’d known
how good it would be
To remember Grandpa
and what he'd still mean to me.
P.J.
