Graf#5 my home

Sometimes, if I sit at my kitchen table and close my eyes, I still can see what it looked like in here twenty or more years ago. This is my grandparent’s house, but I live here now, along with my wife and two children. It’s still there house though, at least I’ll always think of it that way, I spent a lot of time here as a kid, mostly on the weekends, playing with my grandmother. I called her Nanny. I always did, something my mother started I assume. We would always have fun. Sometimes we would dig out old curtains and string them across doorways. I remember making what is now my bedroom into a curtain maze with a little of Grampy’s old fishing line. If you walk down my basement stairs to your left is an old shelf made out of pine boards and 2x4’s, my grandfather built it. On it there is a piece of wood tacked up that reads “ONLY OPEN ON MONDAYS (next line) THE SHOP AHEAD (next line) THE ONE YOU SEE. It is in her hand writing. We used to rig up the basement too. When I was a kid it was one of my favorite pass times to come over here, Nanny and I always had something to do. I lived next door; I can see the house I grew up in anytime I look out the window.

They were simple people, farmers that came up to Maine from Rhode Island when it was starting to get over run with new people. Long before I came around, my parents lived in the house next door. This house went up for sale, my grandparents bought it, and moved up here and immediately started farming the surrounding fields. I remember being awakened at 5:00 A.M. to the sound of the old Bolens yard tractor. I’d look out the window and see my poor old grandmother weeding, hunched over from years of gardening, working away with a hoe. Gramp would be right there with her weeding and driving along as they made their way across the garden. They made their living off hard work, everything they grew they sold at their road side stand. Down in the basement are some of the old signs, POTATOES 50#’s $4.00. Another is a big strawberry that reads “Spencer’s” across it, my mother made both signs for them. Now they sit tucked away, covered in dust. My grandparents are both long gone, lost to cancer. When I get to thinking about them sometimes memories come flooding back and something as simple as closing my eyes sends me right back in time. When I open them, I’ll back in my kitchen with nothing more than faint traces to remind me.