goodbye to the happiest home of my life

Yesterday was our last day at Gmaw's house. I have to say, it was kinda hard to keep it together. I will miss that house so much - it's full to the rafters of memories, and it feels like Gmaw's spirit is there, and it hurts like crazy to say goodbye to it.

The Professor took some pictures for me. His phone has seen better days, so the lens is a little...weathered...but I'm grateful to have them because I didn't take any. Here are a couple:

looking at the back of the house from the edge of the back yard

looking at the edge of the back yard from the patio

Gmaw had a few newspaper articles pasted to the wall in the laundry room - some about laundry tips and stuff like that, but also a couple little things that Granddaddy wrote in about:

The address on both of these is their OLD address before moving
to this house.

I have so many happy memories there, and when I have dreams that take place at "home" it's always at that house. I remember Granddaddy wheeling Big Sis and me around the sprawling back yard in a wheelbarrow, and raking leaves with Gmaw and jumping in the piles. I remember splashing in our kiddie pool on the patio, and at one point we even had a slip n' slide. I remember Gmaw hanging sheets to dry on the clothes line that she had set up right next to the patio, and I can still smell their clean scent, and see the sunlight shining through them, and hear them rustling and snapping in the breeze.

We had a Big Wheel that we would ride at top speed down the hill on the sidewalk in front of the house. We helped Gmaw scrub bird baths and plant bulbs and make beds and wax the porch floor and make syrup for humming birds and we sat with her at the kitchen table and drew pictures and painted with watercolors and did endless crossword puzzles and watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and Night Rider and Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas and Murder She Wrote and later Beauty and the Beast and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. We sat at the foot of her bed watching TV and eating Bonkers and Raisinetts and Soft Batch cookies.

My very first memory, of standing in my playpen in the living room, looking down at my little brown shoes, took place in that house. The carpet was threadbare and blue before she changed it to a super plush white. When I was little, I dug my mom's barbies out of the basement and played with them and their hand-made clothes, and then I played with little animal figurines in the potted plants in the living room. From there, I could hear Bird, the blue budgie, squawking in the kitchen. And I always had to be careful of clawed ambushes from under chairs and tables by her cat, Kitt.

Gmaw's house always had a warm, comforting smell. When we visited, she almost always made us a rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. Often, sliced pink-ish grocery store tomatoes, or a packet of some type of Lipton noodles. Sometimes, white rice with slices of American cheese melted in. It always had the same homey smell when we walked in the kitchen door on Friday nights to stay for the weekend. And when it was time to leave on Sunday night, as we backed out of the driveway, she was always there at the kitchen window, peering through the blinds and waving goodbye.

Anyway, here's a butterfly in the flowers on our front stoop.