As I ascended the stairs I remembered that I used to scale this mountain quite a bit faster than I do now. I remembered that I used to have it memorized exactly which steps to skip or which side to step on so they wouldn’t squeak and wake mom and dad when I got home...late. Then I went into my old bedroom, open and closed the closet doors and looked out the window ...one last time. I remembered the old windows and how they had those little holes at the bottom of the storms. Even on the coldest winter days, dad would open those at night so that we might have “fresh air”. I stood over the upstairs heating grate and let it billow my pant legs, remembering cold winter mornings when I would stand over it and let the heat do the same to my nightgown. Or the mornings when I was in high school when I would stumble into the bathroom in my night shirt to hear dad say, “They'll never let you in!” I walked into mom and dad’s room remembering even back to when it was grandma’s room. Did anyone other than me ever stop to realize that both dad and his mother died in the exact room? I know dad’s official place of death is the hospital, but I was there that morning and I can tell you that both mom and I knew as we left the house that he was already gone. I opened and closed the attic doors to hear that unique sound and walked down the hallway snapping pictures the entire way.
2 comments:
I remember well when that bedroom upstairs was Grandma's and I had the small bedroom. I remember waking each summer morning to the mourning dove's wailing coo.
Grandma had one or two parakeets for many years, one of which learned to "wolf whistle" which took me by surprise a few times. They were on a large round table by the window along with a large Christmas cactus. I'd often see her reading her Bible in quiet times. She once told me she had read it from cover to cover six or seven times!
I, too, remember the squeaky stairs and avoiding them on late nights. Those stairs are STEEP! No wonder Mom had trouble going up and down the last few years.
I remember early school mornings, seeing Dad in the half bath upstairs massaging his head before taking a shower. His hair would be sticking up all over! His barber told him to do this to keep a healthy head of hair. He would shave in that mirror up there. In those days I think we had to almost take a number to get in the full bath and some of us showered the night before. I don't remember it being a hardship but we did have time slots if we showered in the a.m.
Oh yeah, even though I did not live up there, I had some memories of the upstairs, too. Like Dad's "val tray". One thing I never did until just a few years ago before Mom died was to go up into the upper attic above their closet. There wasn't anything interesting up there, but I just had to see it. I am sure one of Dad's great disappointments in finishing the upstairs was how the door that opened on the attic side at the top of the stairs dug into the ceiling (you can see it doing that in the picture). And I will never forget the sound and feeling of opening the attic doors. It was like climbing in the wardrobe to go to Narnia. There was all kinds of cool old stuff up there. And there was that pull-string that would turn the lights on. And the smell of ... old stuff! Remember the attic that was on the northwest corner of the house? Now that attic was borrr-ring.
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