By Sadie McSpadden
My grandma’s rickety old white house sat miles away from her one stoplight town. That grey-haired, country grandma was always found peeking through the small kitchen window as I weaved my way down the long gravel driveway under a tunnel of overgrown green. The thick trees opened up to a big bare field making her little house my safe haven. The detached two car garage appeared larger than the house itself, but both wooden structures were deteriorating at the same rate. The white paint peeled off in strips causing the water-stained wood to shine through. Inside, Mimi sat at her green kitchen table amidst piles of unopened mail, mismatched bookshelves filled with unknown snacks, and her silver walker piled high with magazines and sudoku puzzles. Everything in that house had always been old, but it was too full of life to ever notice. But the day the stones of the chimney tumbled down was the day everything began to feel eerily abandoned. I finally noticed the generations of wasps living in the garage, the two wooden planks supporting the caving ceiling, the rings of condensation decorating the green kitchen table, and the effects that years of smoking can cause.
There was a tree house underneath a pecan tree in the middle of Mimi’s field. I don’t know how many years it had stood out there, but my cousin and I spent hours in it, as did my dad and his sisters. It creaked as the wind rustled the leaves above it and the planks shifted with each footstep. It was painted with the same peeling white paint as the house. We added strips of it to a pile of pecans and leaves to make our “food.” It always blew away before we could begin our feast. My cousin was really my cousin’s daughter. She was two years older than me but the closest relative I had to my age. She had taught me how to open the pecans, and which planks in the tree house not to step on. Our parents sent us out with cracked plastic bowls to gather the fallen pecans. We scavenged through the tall grass to find the perfect nuts that weren’t enclosed in green husks, but ripe brown ones, and weren’t spotted with caterpillar tunnels, but had perfectly smooth shells. My aunts would cheer and dance around us as we set our overflowing bowls on that green, dent-scattered table from hammering open the pecans. I never liked pecans, but I liked the pride their joy brought me.
When more of my cousins began having kids, plastic bowls were no longer passed around for pecan collection. I still shook the low hanging branches from the top of the tree house hoping for nuts to fall, but another harvest never happened. Instead, a metal playset appeared twenty feet away from the tree house. It was complete with two green swings and a small green slide. The tree house had always been unstable, but it was now labeled as dangerous. The kids were warned to stay away from it. My aunts pushed them for hours on the swing set as the toddlers giggled and screamed when they jumped off their high-flying swings. My aunts clapped at their courage. I observed from my perch on the rotting tree house. I now craved the taste of that rich nut.
We always checked the mail at the end of Mimi’s half a mile long driveway after our three-p.m. dinner—my aunts, parents, siblings, cousins, and I. My aunts challenged us as we walked on the uneven bits of gravel to find the smoothest rock. They always won, finding one that fit comfortably into the crook of your hand yet was perfectly flat and smooth on the other side. I blamed it on the fact that they had more practice than I did at scouting rocks.
“Small enough to fit in your pocket,” my aunt pulled out a rock she already had with her. “Hold onto them, so when you’re anxious you can swipe your thumb across the smooth end.” She handed her stress relieving rock to me and replaced it with the new one she found. I held it the whole way back to Mimi’s house. As we rounded the final curve, the dense trees and vines abruptly gave way to her little house. Her outline was framed by the kitchen window as she waved us in. I held up my new rock, and my aunt waved the mail as we predicted what her joy-struck response would look like when we entered the house.
I kept my aunts’ perfect rock in my bedside drawer. I held it when I wanted the memories that felt so far away: to see Mimi waving at us through the window as we rounded the final corner and to hear the laughs of my four aunts all together again. So, when one of my aunts passed away in a car accident, I held that caramel colored rock closer than I ever had before. We didn’t continue our group walks to get the mail; instead, someone would grab it as they drove in. Foot deep potholes and limbs now littered the gravel driveway. It became a maze to even attempt the drive to Mimi’s house. She still sat in the window staring outside, but she no longer waved when the next car drove in. Her frail body became tired, and her eighty-seven-year-old bones struggled to support her. One day she moved from the green table to her bed piled high with crocheted blankets and never left.
Mimi’s tiny house used to be filled with life. Folding tables and chairs of mismatched heights were set up in each room: one in the living room, two on the back porch, and three in a spare bedroom. Each wobbling plastic chair and spot on the green plaid sofa was filled by somebody. Laughter echoed through the home all hours of the day. From the moment my foot stepped out of the car, I was greeted with tight hugs and a choir singing my name. Somehow Mimi’s quiet, gravelly voice was heard above the rest. Her leathery skin, wrinkled from years of smiling, lit when I entered the house awaiting me to hug her thin, feeble frame. My cousin’s toddlers ran in from the back door, through the living room and kitchen, and straight out the front door announcing their need for players in their next game of tag. My aunts and uncles played card games that I never understood at the green table while Mimi coughed to catch her breath from her constant laughter. Her oxygen tank pumped loudly to keep up with her at all hours of the day. My cousins, all at least ten years older than me, lounged in the living room talking: applications to law school, deployment updates, troubles breastfeeding, a new film camera. I passed between rooms—feeling too old for tag with the toddlers but too young to discuss the workforce.
Every room was not only filled with people but also an assortment of food brought by anyone and everyone who came to visit. On the stove top sat a pot of chicken noodles and mashed potatoes accompanied by a burnt wooden serving spoon. A warped plastic ladle puddled with spicy chili laid next to the crockpot. Plates of monkey bread, cheeses and crackers, and grape dumplings scattered the open counter space. Pitchers of Kool-Aid and an ice chest of soda sat on the front porch, while sugar cookies, pies, and chocolate sheet cakes housed the enclosed back porch. I hadn’t noticed when our abundance of food gradually began to dwindle. My cousins began moving cities or moving states. Their kids were growing up and beginning middle school. They preferred to spend holidays with their immediate family rather than the extended family. We no longer needed three rooms to house our food, just one kitchen counter. We no longer needed multiple folding tables to gather, just the green kitchen table.
One day the house became quiet. It was sold soon after Mimi fell asleep buried in her crocheted blankets and never woke up. The hundred-year-old pipes and rotting wood were past repairs. Her acres sold and her home bulldozed. Maybe I should have noticed the changes as they happened. Maybe I should have seen it coming when the voices no longer reverberated off the walls. Maybe I should have clued in when Mimi could no longer get out of bed by herself. The house had always been old. I had only ever known it as it was decaying. But I never saw it as old until a storm blew the stones of the chimney crashing into the house—and everything else came crashing with it. I hated the quiet stillness of the house. I hated being bored in that home I had always known as busy. Most of all, I hated the signs of decomposition that glared at me for so many years. All the sudden, all at once, Mimi was living her last week. I never knew her as being healthy. She had beaten lung cancer twice, but they left their mark: an oxygen tank, the loss of her voice, a hospice nurse. But I never saw her as sick until death was fighting for its final victory. When her arms no longer had the strength to hug me and her lips couldn’t muster a small grin, I hated that old house for dying with her. I hated my final memories of her and her home being so devoid of the life I had always remembered. Even now, I hate how those vibrant celebrations of life have yet to be replicated.
Sadie McSpadden is completing her junior year at John Brown University as an English creative writing and psychology double major. She is currently the Associate Editor of JBU’s literary magazine, Shards of Light, and will be serving as the Chief Editor in the fall.
