To Grandmother's House We Go�

2001-09-19

Went to my sister's birthday party at my folks house this weekend. Actually, it was a party for both my sister and her husband. They started sharing a party almost as soon as they got married, thank goodness. Half the birthdays in my family are in August or September. My husband and I started sharing our party as soon as we got married as well.

After the party we went to my grandmother's house to start the clean up. My grandmother has been in a nursing home for some time, but her significant other has been living in the house, so there wasn't really a need to do anything except general maintenance of the house.

Five days ago he moved out, heading for Missouri and his granddaughter. I'm glad he had somewhere to go. He's had several hip replacements and has had trouble getting around. He can, it's just not fun for him.

So off he went and now starts the job of clearing out almost fifty years worth of junk. And I do mean junk. My grandmother saved the weirdest junk. She had strawberry boxes, neatly washed, stacked to the ceiling in her lath house outside. Inside she had plastic bags, like you get at the store for vegetables and styrofoam meat trays, also washed and neatly stacked in boxes all over the house. God only knows what she did with them.

But among the trash there are some treasures. Not much of real value. More momento type stuff. My mom wanted us to go over and take anything we wanted before they started throwing stuff away.

The stuff that I took was a little on the strange side. She had bottles that she liked on the windowsills. I took all of the blue and green ones, because I do that too. I just stick with a color scheme. A broken statue of a dog; I have a whole zoo full of small animal figures, and it just seemed like he belonged, broken ear and all.

Sheep shears. I don't know what she did with them, but I wanted them to trim my very small hedge. I hate power tools and they work very nicely. I've actually wanted some for a while, but didn't know where to look, suburban girl that I am.

A BIG Bauer jar, probably meant to store flour or something. I think I'll start a bog garden in it, pitcher plants, or something.

Big, old abalone shells. Abalone that size isn't found off the California coast anymore. Twenty years ago there was a five year moratorium on collecting abalone. They extended it more than once, and I think it's still in effect. Only the otters get to eat abalone.

In some ways I feel bad about taking her stuff before she's gone, but she started encouraging us to take stuff years ago. I know she would want us to have it. The only thing I can't have, and the one that I want the most, is the house itself. It sits on a quarter acre lot. I imagine the kind of garden that I could make there and I practically slobber. These days they build house so close together you can stand between them and touch two of them at one time. The house itself would take years of renovation and cleaning, but I could care less with all that lovely yard.

That and it just hurts me to think of never being able to go back and pick avocados or macadamia nuts. Or stand under the avocado trees and let the rest of the world drift away in the pattern of the sunlight between the leaves.

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