Home Is Where the Heart Is

My Grandparent's house sold after being on the market for 3 days.  I never even wanted it to go on the market, and was filled with angst about it, so perhaps it was a blessing to go so quick.

I always said that I wanted to make one last trip to the house before it sold, and in a way I did.  Not the way I planned, but apparently God is a better planner than I, because in all honesty if I had known my last trip was my "last" trip I might not have left would have had a really hard time leaving.

I spent many, many, many days and night's at my Grandparent's house.  I remember the old back porch, kitchen and downstairs bedroom.  Even as a child I was sentimental.  I didn't want their house to change and campaigned against the updated look.  I knew it inside and out.  I knew right where ole Dibber the dog was buried, even though the exact spot is now under lots and lots of foliage.  When I was a little girl I knew where the best blackberries were, knew the best path down through the woods, over the creek and to the football field, figured out early on how to climb on the playhouse roof and how to peek through the fence at the pool next door.

I remember "helping" Mamie & Puppa in the garden.  The long stalks of rhubarb and the scent of the tomato plants. I remember Easter Egg hunts, and our visit the summer of Puppa's next to last birthday, though none of us knew it was his next to last at the time.  I remember the pictures of Puppa's football teams lining the staircase, and the first time I saw G, and then G & K climbing up and down those stairs.  My brother and I spent many nights fighting sleep in my Uncle's old bedroom, and broke a window at one point, by throwing something that shouldn't have been thrown.  I'm sure Mamie & Puppa were more than a little aggravated by that, and the time we broke a lamp by the stairs, and the time I sent Uncle D out onto the sunlight in the kitchen to "clean" it........and the list could go on and on.  If they were (and as an adult I can't imagine them not) aggravated by the endless list, we never knew it.  We were always welcomed back with open arms.  It was our home, and we knew it.  Over the bed in the room Uncle D and I shared when we were there was a cross stitch in a frame, done by my Great Grandmother.  "Come to our house for a week or a day, come to our house and don't go away"  My memories of Vernon St. cover all the decades of my life, and though the loss of our home is hard, the wonderful memories of a house filled with love sooths the loss. 

I flew up very suddenly a few months ago, and stayed there, right in Mamie & Puppa's old room.  Bro took a bath in the tub where I was bathed as a baby, and I breathed in the old familiar scent of the house.  I sat in Puppa's "cubby" and just looked at his things.  When it was time for me to go, to leave the house, and say goodbye to Mamie, my focus had to be on Bro, returning the rental car and surviving the flight home (I was sick with the flu, though I didn't know it at the time).  I had no time to think about anything other than my next step, and in a very odd sense feel this was all in God's plan.  If I had known it was my last time, it would have been difficult to walk out the door.

 Since shortly after the death of my Grandfather, the house has sat empty for the majority of the time. Mamie tried to live there after he was gone, but it just wasn't safe, and the time came for her to be moved.  I've been thinking about the saying, "Home is where the heart is", and Vernon St, though much loved by myself, had lost it's heart.  Our family was and is the heart of Vernon St and I can now I can see bits and pieces of it in my own home, in my parent's home, in my brother's home and even in my Aunt's and Uncle's home.

So long Vernon St.  It's been a good 30+ year run! (for me--the house itself was built in 1844)