What does it mean to me?
That is one of the hardest questions I have ever asked myself.
It means so many things.
It's Gram & Gramps' house.
It's where my mom grew up.
It's every holiday, every party, every up and down of our lives rolled into a building. Yet, it's not just a building. It has a soul.
Grandma has lived there since she was 17 and dating her "beau" who became Grandpa.
Grandpa helped Grandpa O-Dad BUILD the second floor, how many people can say that?
Great Grandma Mom lived upstairs--days of sleepovers in her bed with the AM radio playing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer", "Bumblebee Tuna", "watching" her program (As the World Turns), baseball games, doll heads, many a Miss America pagent, learning how to play solitaire.
Remember the light switch box that grandpa invented for her because she couldn't turn the lamp switch?
Jen, do you remember sleeping on the pull out on the porch upstairs, just because we could? Hiding in the attic rooms. Going through the button drawers over and over and over again because they were Grandma Mom's and they were so pretty and it was amazing that they were there.
The "office" in the den in the upstairs, pretending to be Katrina Dobis, Secretary.
The doll trunks.
The tension lamps. The stained glass windows on the side of the house next to the ginormous hanging mirror. How does that thing stay there?
The gold tea set.
The mirror upstairs with Grandma Mom's little animals on it that we would regift to her wrapped in tissue. And how she'd oo and ah over it as if she'd never seen it before.
Washing the blinds with gram and remembering to straighten out the macrame pulls. Remember that year that Gram paid me to hang out of the windows and wash the outsides?
The cellar room with the cans of water from WWII.
The flood, the player piano, the pool table, the hours and hours spent watching Gramps make something in his workshop.
Swirlies.
The lathe.
Macrame plant hangers. The lamp in the den. Sleeping in the den. Wondering why there was a heater in the doorway between the den and gram & gramp's room?
Grandma's flocked wall paper.
The games and the puzzles. Remember the Land of the Lost puzzle? It's a circle. We'd put it together at least once a visit, usually on a Sunday after church.
Remember the slide shows? Where is that stuff, does it still work? That would be a fun way to spend a cold day.
DAV meetings and getting to play upstairs while the adults had their meeting and sneaking downstairs to eat sugar cubes.
Lipstick candy that magically came out of our ears.
Gram's "dirty" frogs.
The Christmas tree and Santa in his balloon. The Thanksgiving centerpiece that's probably 40 years old if a day. The piano and many a carol sung around it.
My name on a tile in the bathroom.
Remember the old floors with the light brown and dark brown squares? Playing the "only step on the dark square" game. How sad we were when gramps put in a new floor to surprise gram and we couldn't play that game anymore because they were white.
Grandma tapping her spoon on the edges of her "Club" pots and pans so many times they are etched.
Remember when the phone number was "NE1-5021"? The phone table in the hall.
Being tall enough, finally, to reach the light chain in the hallway.
Kugali, Pigs in a Blanket, Spaetzle, Grandma Mom's homemade bread, strawberry banana jello mold, cranberry relish, red cabbage...all of the love made into food to feed us at holidays, in times of joy, sorrow, and every occasion in between.
Graduating from the adult table.
The stories. Hawk Lady. Shaggy cows. The banana and the rollerskates. Grandpa messing with grandma all of the time.
Owassippe trips planned at the table. Crystal Lake trips planned there in January because we had to send in our application for a site.
Did you know that where the basement stairs are by the back door there used to be an "ice box"? There is a secret staircase in the hall closet that leads to the trap door upstairs because it used to be "just" an attic.
Painting the basement stairs "with" gramps. Trying not to get too much paint where it didn't belong.
The little door for the mail in the front. The doorbell chimes. The grandfather clock. The cuckoo clock and getting to pull the chains on a rare occasion.
Fighting with Jen over who gets to put out the celebration candles with the snuffer. No blowing! Hiding under the dining room table on the support beam making it into a hide-out. Eavesdropping on adult conversations.
Dance performances from the front hall, complete with music and scarves.
The hundreds of Easter, Graduation, Birthday, and family portraits taken on the front stairs.
The hydrangeas out front.
The lily of the valley on the side of the house.
The silver fence.
The park.
The neighbors.
Realizing that you have the same hands as grandma, and that your mom does, too. Realizing that you sit the same way as grandma, curl your toes the same way, and love watching grandpa fall asleep in his recliner with his blanket on him.
Watching spanish soap operas with gramps, just because.
The love. The fights. The running away from and running back to 5959 N. Newburg.
I know how I feel about it being someone else's house.
I hate it.
I wish it could stay in our family forever. I don't understand why it has to be sold. I hate it more every day because I think of a new and more poignant memory and it breaks my heart to know that I can never run "home" there anymore.
I hope that we get one last Christmas in the house before it's sold. So we can hear "To my Darling from Me" and drink spiked eggnog and grate fresh nutmeg over it. So we can gather one last time as a family and toast our lives in the house.
I love that house. It has a piece of all of us, that is how it lives.
Oh, I am sure that it will live on, it just won't be ours and that's what makes me so emotional and a little bit lost.
