Small events have a way of leaving footprints on our souls. Memories, wrapped in tissue paper, and stored safely away, until such time as we lift them gently from their storage place and gingerly finger the paper to find the treasure inside. Some, we visit often, others not so frequently. One can tell, by how crumpled the tissue paper around them has become. These little snippets of the past have a way of triggering a desire to run our fingers over more and more of them, until sometimes we’ve unwrapped several little packages before we’re done. And often, we only stop because we’ve found the one — the one that makes us linger; the one we find it harder to re-wrap and put away.
I remember my Grandfather’s house. I cannot recall how many other tiny packages of tissue I unfurled today before I found this one, but this is the one that held me, and it is wrapped in well-used paper. The memories, although fleeting, are warm and comforting. Images of a little girl, perhaps five, and a room with patterned tin on the ceiling, and yellow and black linoleum on the floor.
A chair made out of a narrow strip of rug hanging on a wooden frame, like a hammock. It made a child that small feel suspended in mid air, and cradled in warmth at the same time. It sat beside a huge wood stove, with a big bottom and a hutch over top. It was a soft mustard colour, with black top and trim, and it had lifters with curly metal handles to lift the circles of iron off to put wood inside. One had smaller and smaller circles all within the bigger one, with the center one being quite small — just like me.
A drawer, with an upside down scooped metal handle, and candy inside. Usually Humbugs. Sometimes a long cardboard tube of Smarties.
In the next room, a window, with a ledge wide enough for a little girl to lay on with crayons and book, tucked snugly behind a little space heater that was actually bigger than I was, and had the same kind of lifter for the circle on the top. No one else could squeeze their way in there; it was my own special place, warmed from the sun through the big bay window on one side, and the heater on the other.
A big old upright piano with silent keys. We had a piano at home, but this one made not a sound — at least not for me. But my Grandfather must have been magic, for when he sat down to play, and he pressed his feet on those large carpeted pedals underneath, and pulled those funny looking knobs that stuck out all along above the keys, there emitted the most beautiful, warm, music I had ever heard.
A huge day bed sitting in front of the back window, so huge I could hardly get up onto it. It didn't look that big in later years, but the one wrapped up in my memories is enormous!
And the tunnel, outside that back window. You got to it through a big, heavy door off the kitchen, that seemed to open into the dark, and the long, low 'tunnel' of a back porch, stretched almost the whole length of the house. Almost all the last half of it was lined with windows. Windows to the world. Later, when I was much older — maybe eleven or twelve — this tunnel held awesome treasures. Old enamel pots and pans of all colours and sizes. They never ceased to amaze me.
And if that back door seemed big, and dark, and heavy, — almost vault-like, to this tiny little girl, the front door was just the opposite. Situated directly across the room from it's counterpart, it was a dainty door, with a wooden screen door, decorated with shapes and spindles. A small cement pad greeted you when you stepped out into the sun, and beside it, a beautiful cluster of Lilly Of The Valley which I handle ever-so-gently whenever I unwrap the memory. Somehow, at that tender age, I knew these tiny white bells had something to do with my Grandmother. A woman I had never known. It was almost as if the back door was Grandpa, and the front door was Gramma, and these tiny flowers left an especially strong mark on my memory.
There are other memories too, from long after the house ceased being used, much later even than ferreting out the colourful pots from the tunnel. Sadder memories perhaps, but still, they are there, wrapped in tissue, in the box marked “Grandpa's House.”. Memories of the yellow and black floor rising up in strange ripples, all across the room, like waves — effects of the seasons on the unheated building that had no basement underneath it. Of ceilings seeming much lower than they once had, and of knowing the magic behind the pump organ.
Grandpa's house is gone now, but these memories linger on, and I carefully re-wrap them, tuck them back into their box, and smile.
july 2004 ©Janet Reid
