It’s getting dark out. I turn on the living room lamp and start to close the blinds. But first, I look out the window at the house across the street. They haven’t shut their blinds yet and I can see my parents moving around in their kitchen, probably preparing dinner. My father appears at the front door. The porch light comes on. I don’t know if he can see me, but I give a small wave, then close my blinds against the darkness. Some people might think it’s a bad thing to live across the street from your parents, but I take great comfort in knowing they’re right there, knowing that I can see the house I grew up in from my front stoop.
We bought this house in December. It’s been in my family for more than 50 years. My grandfather and his masonry buddies built it with their own hands. When I was an infant, I lived in the downstairs apartment for a short time. When I had my first child, we moved into that same apartment. My grandparents lived here until they died, then my aunt and uncle took the house over until they, too, left us.
And now it is mine. The house in which I spent every Sunday of my childhood, playing football on the expansive lawn, eating spaghetti and meatballs in the dining room, watching Lawrence Welk with Grandpa in the living room as the evening waned, that house is mine.
When we first moved in I spent some time walking room to room, letting the memories contained in each overtake me. Ghosts of my childhood surfaced; I remembered the hideous painting that hung in the tv room — it scared me so much I wouldn’t stay alone in that room. I remembered the spare room which later became somewhat of a hospice room for Grandpa in the weeks before he died. The bedroom. The living room that always smelled faintly of cigars. The kitchen where Grandpa secretly served us wine when Grandma wasn’t looking. I stood in each room and closed my eyes and held my breath and I could hear the Jimmy Roselli eight tracks being played, I could smell the garlic in the gravy (we always called it gravy, not sauce), I could feel the house shake with the noise of so many kids running the hallway, laughter and tears and all the noise a large family makes when they get together.
This was before we moved our furniture in and I swear I could hear my thoughts echo throughout the house. Would Grandma and Grandpa be happy for me, owning this house now? Of course they would. But I would I do right by them, would I make this house a place of love and comfort like they did before me? Would I invite over family — now scattered all over the place — and fill the dining room with the raucous laughter of people eating pasta and telling old family stories? Would I have everyone over on Christmas or Thanksgiving? Would we sit on the breezeway on spring and summer nights, talking long into the night, maybe playing cards while the rest of the world went to bed?
I walked the house again and again, imagining it as mine, with my stuff in it, my pictures, my furniture, my family.
I couldn’t make it the same. I wouldn’t. I realized — with a small sense of relief — that I couldn’t replicate what my grandparents made of the house and I shouldn’t want to. I need to make it my own. Despite all the memories hanging on to the space, despite the fact that I can feel the presence of my relatives here, I need to turn the house into one that I call my own without constantly saying “my grandparents’ house.”
But I want to fill the house with the comfort my grandparents provided. I want it to be a warm place where people feel welcome. I want what anyone wants for their own home, my wants just happen to come with ghosts.
We’ve now filled our home with things that are us. We have hung our art and arranged our furniture and cozied up the rooms that the last tenants — the only strangers to ever live here — lived in with a sort of sterility. I feel like we’ve taken back the house from strange hands and put the life back into it. While it may not be the same life my grandparents carved out for us while they were here, it’s warm and comforting already. We’ll make our own memories here, establish our own Sunday routines and breezeway traditions. We’ll invite people over, but definitely not every Sunday. Grandma had a lot more patience for visitors than I.
Sometimes when I’m up at 3am, as I’m prone to be, I sit in silence and listen for old, familiar sounds like the baseboards rumbling with heat. Sometimes I swear I hear a light buzzing sound — the sound I used to hear as Grandpa adjusted his electric recliner — and want to dismiss it at the same time I want to be believe Grandpa is saying hi. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits but at 3am I’m open to all sorts of possibilities and the possibility that my grandparents are hanging around to maybe tell me they’re happy I bought the house gives me a small sense of comfort.
I light a fire and the peek out the window at my parents’ house, and I can’t believe my good fortune to have ended up back here, a world where I feel like I belong.
It’s good to be home.
