Tonight is the eve of Thanksgiving. I am baking an apple pie at 9:30 at night and wondering what the rest of the world is doing. Maybe some people are with family, maybe some are alone. Maybe some are praying for the things I already have. I'm thankful for so many things in my life. Even in the middle of what feels like a storm, there is silence and peace in the center of it.
I find myself there.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
Grandpa
It has been a little while since I've written. On one hand, there is so much to say. So much to be grateful for. So many wonderful irons in the fire, so much to look forward to. But on the other, there is little I am able to say about the last two months. Perhaps all of it too painful and I'm doing my best to not sink into a place that takes me away from all of the good going on in my life. It is now November. The entire month of October seemed to just fly by like it never happened.
I spent almost a month in Texas, visiting with family and trying my best to relax. It was a long and tiresome adventure in a lot of ways. Many emotions surfaced after laying dormant for a lot of years. I visited the house where I grew up. It was the first time since my Grandfather passed away in 2009 that I had been back. I looked around the place and it was familiar, yet so far in the distance that I was unable to relate to it anymore. I imagined myself growing up there and in the conditions in which I did. I was amazed at how much the house had stayed the same but had also deteriorated. I think a home, left unoccupied for a period of time, just shuts down. As if abandoned and cut off from the life forces that once loved and occupied it's walls, just causes it to lose its will to live.
After wandering around a bit, I stayed mostly in my Grandfathers room, sifting through his chest of drawers and hoping to find some old cards and drawings that I made for him when I was a child. When I reached the second drawer, I found all of his hankies. For whatever reason, seeing these brought me to tears almost immediately. His bandanna handkerchiefs were always, always something he carried. The only day in his life that I know of where he didn't have one, was on Sundays when he went to church. My Aunt found me, sobbing, crouched down next to his dresser. She offered her bit of condolences but I realized at that moment, that while the rest of my family stayed there and grieved after the funeral, I left the next day and never went through all of the stages of grief that they did. My heart was in a place that they had already worked through, and I felt a little alone. I felt like 5-year-old me, sitting there in the same spot where he used to play his accordion.
I never did find the old cards and drawings I made for him. But I did find some old letters that he had written to his mother while he was in basic training for the Army. I took as many as I could find, all neatly wrapped in plastic bags, tied firmly with used bread ties. He owned an awful lot of junk, and collected a lot of things but somehow, he always managed to keep all of that chaos neatly organized, even if it was in his own special ways.
I read a few of the letters when I went back home and I felt connected to his spirit again. But this was another time and another place. Here he was, writing letters and sending money back home in 1948, long before he had met my Grandmother, had my Mother and then later found himself raising me until I was 9. And here I was, his Granddaughter all grown up, reading his thoughts in 2012. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that those letters hadn't be re-read by anyone else but him and my Great Grandma since 1948.
Now I'm back in Denver, and the dust from a place I used to be able to call home is settling back in Texas.
I spent almost a month in Texas, visiting with family and trying my best to relax. It was a long and tiresome adventure in a lot of ways. Many emotions surfaced after laying dormant for a lot of years. I visited the house where I grew up. It was the first time since my Grandfather passed away in 2009 that I had been back. I looked around the place and it was familiar, yet so far in the distance that I was unable to relate to it anymore. I imagined myself growing up there and in the conditions in which I did. I was amazed at how much the house had stayed the same but had also deteriorated. I think a home, left unoccupied for a period of time, just shuts down. As if abandoned and cut off from the life forces that once loved and occupied it's walls, just causes it to lose its will to live.
After wandering around a bit, I stayed mostly in my Grandfathers room, sifting through his chest of drawers and hoping to find some old cards and drawings that I made for him when I was a child. When I reached the second drawer, I found all of his hankies. For whatever reason, seeing these brought me to tears almost immediately. His bandanna handkerchiefs were always, always something he carried. The only day in his life that I know of where he didn't have one, was on Sundays when he went to church. My Aunt found me, sobbing, crouched down next to his dresser. She offered her bit of condolences but I realized at that moment, that while the rest of my family stayed there and grieved after the funeral, I left the next day and never went through all of the stages of grief that they did. My heart was in a place that they had already worked through, and I felt a little alone. I felt like 5-year-old me, sitting there in the same spot where he used to play his accordion.
I read a few of the letters when I went back home and I felt connected to his spirit again. But this was another time and another place. Here he was, writing letters and sending money back home in 1948, long before he had met my Grandmother, had my Mother and then later found himself raising me until I was 9. And here I was, his Granddaughter all grown up, reading his thoughts in 2012. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that those letters hadn't be re-read by anyone else but him and my Great Grandma since 1948.
Now I'm back in Denver, and the dust from a place I used to be able to call home is settling back in Texas.
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