Home
I looked up my grandparent's old address in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Amazing that I can recall the school I went to and the road they lived on. This was my home. My northstar for the bulk of my childhood. All of my memories originate here, in this house.
When my grandparents built the house, it ended up a Tudor because they ran out of money to cover the outside walls in fieldstone. I see that the fieldstone work has done in the intervening years (since the late 70s when they sold it and moved to Largo, FL). Man, I'd love to take a wee tour of the inside ... but realize what an incredible privacy violation it'd be. The pool my grandad assiduously maintained for years is gone, that's now, according to google maps, a vast swathe of greenspace on the property now. The greenhouse is also gone, but it was falling to ruin at the time my grandparents were selling and leaving the property for Florida. I remember keeping a jar of worms and another jar of fireflies in the mudroom above the greenhouse. Even in those years, the greenhouse bit of the house was starting to fail.
So many of my formative memories are in this house, and it's still standing. I lived in my mother's room; a gabled small room over the kitchen with violet posy wallpaper (which my gran detailed long and long about how she couldn't find the 'right' wallpaper when my mother was a child, but finally found a paper that was 'almost' right by the time I was living there), it had a single bed, a nightstand, a chair, and the three-drawer chest of drawers that now serves as my nightstand (which my grandfather built).
I remember the dining room and its cork floor and sitting at the end of the table facing the wide window which looked out over the backyard and base of the tree that bloomed outside my bedroom window--a setting of so many traumatic food scenes between my gran and me. I remember every nook and cranny in the kitchen and the big tin container of Brim coffee in the pantry cupboard. I remember the wee room off the garage (under the upstairs hall) which was my gran's sewing room; the big room over the garage which was my uncles' room, gosh that must have been cold in the winter; and when my grandpa repapered the stairwell with bamboo paper how my gran criticized it and asked him to follow on with a razor and slice open the very few bubbles in the paper to make it all smooth; the patio off their bedroom (over the living room and mudroom), which we were never allowed to go on because Grandpa was afraid we'd fall through the ceiling. Keep in mind the house was 30 years old by the time I lived in it.
Perhaps I could write a letter to the current residents and ask if I could visit some ghosts there and take some pics to match up the current reality with my memory. I miss my grandparents' house like one misses a tooth. The hydrangeas under the living room window, the smell of Joy dishwashing liquid and coffee brewing in the percolator... my grandpa pointing out the rhubarb he'd planted in the midst of the bachelor's buttons in my gran's spring garden... the giant window in the living room that survived a windstorm even after a tree fell on it. Being very, very quiet on Friday nights hoping to catch Columbo or MacMillan and Wife during the NBC Friday Night Mystery, which was past my bed time, but ...
It's all still there, I am less than two hours by car away from it. Memory is ephemeral... you can't go home again.
When my grandparents built the house, it ended up a Tudor because they ran out of money to cover the outside walls in fieldstone. I see that the fieldstone work has done in the intervening years (since the late 70s when they sold it and moved to Largo, FL). Man, I'd love to take a wee tour of the inside ... but realize what an incredible privacy violation it'd be. The pool my grandad assiduously maintained for years is gone, that's now, according to google maps, a vast swathe of greenspace on the property now. The greenhouse is also gone, but it was falling to ruin at the time my grandparents were selling and leaving the property for Florida. I remember keeping a jar of worms and another jar of fireflies in the mudroom above the greenhouse. Even in those years, the greenhouse bit of the house was starting to fail.
So many of my formative memories are in this house, and it's still standing. I lived in my mother's room; a gabled small room over the kitchen with violet posy wallpaper (which my gran detailed long and long about how she couldn't find the 'right' wallpaper when my mother was a child, but finally found a paper that was 'almost' right by the time I was living there), it had a single bed, a nightstand, a chair, and the three-drawer chest of drawers that now serves as my nightstand (which my grandfather built).
I remember the dining room and its cork floor and sitting at the end of the table facing the wide window which looked out over the backyard and base of the tree that bloomed outside my bedroom window--a setting of so many traumatic food scenes between my gran and me. I remember every nook and cranny in the kitchen and the big tin container of Brim coffee in the pantry cupboard. I remember the wee room off the garage (under the upstairs hall) which was my gran's sewing room; the big room over the garage which was my uncles' room, gosh that must have been cold in the winter; and when my grandpa repapered the stairwell with bamboo paper how my gran criticized it and asked him to follow on with a razor and slice open the very few bubbles in the paper to make it all smooth; the patio off their bedroom (over the living room and mudroom), which we were never allowed to go on because Grandpa was afraid we'd fall through the ceiling. Keep in mind the house was 30 years old by the time I lived in it.
Perhaps I could write a letter to the current residents and ask if I could visit some ghosts there and take some pics to match up the current reality with my memory. I miss my grandparents' house like one misses a tooth. The hydrangeas under the living room window, the smell of Joy dishwashing liquid and coffee brewing in the percolator... my grandpa pointing out the rhubarb he'd planted in the midst of the bachelor's buttons in my gran's spring garden... the giant window in the living room that survived a windstorm even after a tree fell on it. Being very, very quiet on Friday nights hoping to catch Columbo or MacMillan and Wife during the NBC Friday Night Mystery, which was past my bed time, but ...
It's all still there, I am less than two hours by car away from it. Memory is ephemeral... you can't go home again.