My grandparents put their house on the market last fall. Someone has now come round to buy it, and while I'm sure this pleases them, I feel as if a part of my childhood is being cruelly stripped from me.
Apparently I am a far more sentimental person than I ever gave myself credit for. Pragmatic Aimee is realizing that she's got a storehouse full of emotion, feeling, and human-heartness that's long been kept under stringent lock and key. Why? Because all of that humany stuff represents, well, weakness. Vulnerability. And it requires a certain level of trust, just to exist.
Life is scary. Having emotions and feelings and letting people into them is scary, too. These are things that children do not realize.
Perhaps that's why I'm now having such a terrible time at the notion that one pillar of my youthful happiness is being stripped away. Oh sure, the memories will always remain, but then I wonder: will my thoughts do it justice? Will I remember all the good? What if I forget some of the best parts, simply because I don't have the physical representation to remind me?
Last week I had dinner with my grandparents which was a wonderful, entertaining trip down memory lane. Because they live in the same town, I was able to do a quick walkthrough of the old house, took a few snapshots, realizing with each room I passed through that I will never remember it all. It made me sad.
Yes, as I passed through the bedrooms that my cousins and I used to sleep in, I was overwhelmed with sadness. Nostalgia. And just missing the proverbial "good old days." We're all adults now, spread out here and there, some with spouses and kiddos and careers. But we were all close enough in age that sometimes it felt more as if we were siblings, not cousins. We ran and played and imagined and fought together. We laughed and screamed and cried and got kicked outside together. We shot things, went on bike rides, had foot races, played tag, went swimming, hollered and giggled and played with fire.
It's melancholy for me, indeed, that the house is bidding its final farewell. Sure, perhaps future generations of children will come to feel about it the same way that I do, that my siblings and cousins do.
But what if they don't? What if they don't appreciate the Pink Room and the Purple Room or the magnificent banister? What if they don't know how to leap over the bushes by the front porch, or that if you do it the wrong way you'll be bruised for days? Or that if you hide under the bushes beneath the bathroom window you will win hide and seek because the boys will get distracted long before they've thought to look there? And even though you know the game is over, you stay there, under the bushes, because it's quiet and it's secret and you've always wanted a Secret Garden of your own.
What if no more kids learn to ride their bikes down the gentle slope of the side yard, with their grandpa letting go of the bike and telling them to steer and, no! Don't look back! Look forward! Look ahead!
Well, that's just it, then. We're supposed to keep looking forward, keep our sights focused on things to come. But still, the memories tug at my heart, reminding me that if we don't remember where we've come from, we'll never be able to find out where we're going. We may, in fact, just keep treading the same space of grass, year after year, if we don't keep one ear tuned to the past.
The past doesn't define us, but it is precisely what has shaped us into who we are today. Good, bad, and ugly, it all got its say. Missing a single, minor element, we wouldn't be just as we are.
Without this dear, old, eccentric gray house, I wouldn't be the me I am today. And I intend to take my sweet time reminiscing about it, too. This is the first of many such writings. Perhaps it will help me to embrace the happy with the melancholic reality that all good things come to an end.
But new things can't come about if there aren't endings of others. It's that little gem that I'm a'clinging to. With just the slightest hint of tears in my eyes.
