thinking about my grandma's house up north again. it had such a specific energy to it -- dated wood paneling in the den, my uncle's dusty baseball trophies, glow in the dark stars on the bedroom ceiling upstairs, and the living and dining rooms that were perfectly set with delicate glass knickknacks in the permanent absence of children. I loved it there, but there was always this weird underlying feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there. It was a house that last saw kids in maybe 1990-something, until I was born and started visiting every summer. No pets, no kids. Perfectly preserved and curated save for some old G.I. Joes and whatever things they dug out of the attic for me to play with.
But it made my parents happy to see the old neighborhoods and friends from high school. All I knew is that I was tiny and this place was soft and tactile and had seen many lives and it made the people I loved happy. It was me and my little DVD player looping Yellow Submarine in the car the whole day-long drive, and switching to documentaries about space when I needed something to fall asleep to during the night. Meaningless to a brain so new, save for the shapes and colors and sounds.
And then COVID hit six years ago and I stopped visiting. And I was suddenly old and knew what things meant and everything was thrown out of whack. And we never made it back up there before they sold the place and moved. I'll never spend another night breathing in the humid July air, with the weird unfamiliar scent of the suburbs and the smell of burnt out fireworks on it. I won't have another "how was your birthday" chat in the perfect little backyard. I won't have another car ride where my parents are up front singing along to something together and smiling. No more nights sleeping on a dusty carpet and feeling my face itch from the sweat, no more tracing my predecessors' fingerprints in worn plastic toys. It's all packed up in boxes and I have no clue where all of it ended up in the move. Maybe it's gone and maybe it's somewhere I'll see it again and maybe it's somewhere I'll never see. I don't know. I still have dreams that take place in that house. I can still see it like I'm there, even when it was only a week or so a year for a handful of years.
I think part of me is still in there in the dust.
