Of everywhere you have ever lived,
you know your grandparents' kitchen the best.
Know where the silverware is kept, and the plates.
Can find the pots and pans; knives and spatulas; rags and extra aprons.
Can spot where the fancy dining-ware lies hidden away, for guests.
(and you are a stowaway, family passing by and through,
staying and leaving but always returning, never quite a guest.)
Of everywhere I have ever lived,
my grandparents' kitchen, house --
this is the only place I have always moved through seamlessly.
It's odd to think,
standing in that familiar kitchen,
tangentially following a recipe of my father's,
that I am a legacy
of things soon to be long gone.
(of course, so are we all).
For 12 years, I was the only great-grandchild,
of my father's side of the family --
first daughter of the first son of the first daughter of the youngest child
(eldest of the eldest of the eldest -- of the youngest).
I did not grow taller than my great-grandmother until I was 13,
and I thought that it was perfect -- that maybe a new child would pop into existence every time the next eldest of my generation got too tall --
my little cousin never got a chance to outgrow her.
All of your thoughts are a eulogy, not yet written.
This is the house, the house of my grandparents, where I spent almost
all my winters, at least half my summers.
This is the only house I know
with a still valid address,
long-ago etched into my memory.
This is the only house I know,
still-standing, still with its first inhabitants.
This is not a house I can stand to stay in.
Not any longer.
My (great) aunt hauls out a box of her mother's things,
slides a leather binder with school notes across to me:
they are dated in the war years, 1941, 42, 43,
years my great-grandmother stayed with her own aunt,
in order to be able to attend high school.
She slides them over to me,
to have me go over her mother's chemistry notes.
She wants them grouped together, the diagrams that go with the notes,
wants to frame them, one each for her and her three sisters,
and I, among the living, am the only one capable of deciphering them:
algebra tied to chemicals tied to method statements,
all in beautiful cursive hand-writing I can only half-read --
amidst four daughters, six grandsons, I am left the only one
who fell deep into math, deep into science,
deep enough to piece together these old, torn, scraps of paper.
And here I am a legacy of things I wished I could have known sooner.
Here, I am falling in love and falling (silently) through sadness.
Here, I am thinking, I wish. And swallowing that thought.
The dead fall silent, but the living tell stories of the dead --
People die, and you learn things you didn't know, before:
things you want to. things you don't.
My grandparents' house looks almost exactly like it used to:
same paint, same rooms, same back porch, same messy garage.
but the people inside look old, now. (but so does everyone, now.
even my parents' hair has settled into grey, worry lines into wrinkles.)
but the people inside look frail, now.
like any little thing could break them apart.
and they look at me like I am the light behind their eyes
(and I am so far, from being able to be that light).
My grandfather does not die, on that sunny evening in March of 2019.
He ends up in the ICU. He ends up sickly, but making it through.
That same, chilly morning, the one who stops breathing
is my great-grandmother.
And it is her funeral that I miss.
Sometimes, people live, and you still learn things you did not want to.
about their demons, hidden in old chester drawers sealed shut.
about their mercies, at others' expense.
about insults and grievances ricocheting in the dark --
things that would stop me cold, (and maybe they do)
if family wasn't family -- if there weren't secrets held close.
Someday, I will go back to that house that I did not grow up in.
But I spent summers, there, and winters. I spent two springs.
Someday, I will have to go back to the house
that my grandmother taught me to make cookies in.
where my mother made doughnuts, using her mother's recipe,
and my great-grandmother and I were in charge of toppings.
where my grandfather measured my height year by year on the wall,
and my father, every year, cooked up a storm.
Someday, I will return to that house
with its inhabitants
no longer living.
And yet, as time keeps on passing by:
I can not bring myself to stay in that house,
this last thing left of familiarity.
I am someone else's light, still, however reluctant.
And I am afraid, that staying there will be the thing to break me.
