723 Sparks

PART ONE: SOLITARE

(Written on July 10th, 2015)

I’m lounging in my room right now. All of the lights are on, bringing an extra pink hue to the already-pink walls and furniture. It’s amazing to think that my grandmother and her sister shared this room from the time they were born.

When I was a little girl, I loved the pink room because it was frilly and girly and full of interesting, old things. As I’ve grown older, I appreciate it for a different reason… because it’s the same.

Moving trucks have shuttled my things all across the country, but no one moves a thing here at my grandparents’ house.

To my left, the door to the living room rests mostly open, and the sounds of a golf-game waft in. A little while ago, when Pop was out of the room, I went in and nudged the volume down (no one needs to listen to golf that loud). Now he’s back in his chair nodding off to his afternoon nap.

On the other side of the pink room, there is a door that leads to the den. From there I can hear the quick tap of the keyboard under Mamoo’s fingers as she responds to emails. SHE WRITES IN ALL CAPITALS SO IT ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE SHE’S YELLING but I know it’s really so she can see more clearly what she is composing.

Tonight Mamoo will make dinner. And the three of us will gather around the TV with our plates in our laps to watch Matlock. Halfway through the show, Pop will get up and take our plates to the dishwasher and Mamoo will demand he get her some ice-cream. One night when Mamoo was eating ice-cream her tooth fell right out of her head. She put it aside on a napkin then finished her bowl before it had time to melt.

After Matlock, Mamoo and Pop will watch an old western and I’ll come back here, to the pink room, and do whatever I have to do. But I won’t miss the show. The sound of guns and wagon wheels will fill the whole house, so if I shut my eyes, I can almost believe I’m in the old west.

At 10:00pm Mamoo and Pop go to sleep, then the house gets real quiet. It’s the good kind of quiet, still and peaceful like a hug. Sometimes it rains and the creek out back overflows, and the rushing water puts me to sleep like a lullaby.

When I was young I would play in the creek all the time. My brothers and cousins and friends and I would follow it up for miles and create many adventures. Now I like to sit and look at it from the big panel windows in the house. It’s a beautiful way to eat breakfast. And the laughter from adventures past seems to resonate off the big, white rocks along the water’s edge and fill me with inspiration for stories.

In the mornings, Mamoo does her crossword puzzle and if I’m around she’ll ask me questions, “Wendy, what’s a 7 letter word for Japanese paper?”. Most of the time I have no idea of the answer. Pop has usually been up for hours by the time I surface and – having already read the paper – he sits in the den playing Solitaire on the computer. Mamoo plays Solitaire, too, in the living room with real cards. And I play solitaire of a different sort, lounging in the pink room, under the ultra-pink light of a pink chandelier. I think about life, and how unpredictable it is, and I’m glad for the routine of my grandparents’ house.

PART TWO: THE EMPTY CHAIR

(Written on April 27, 2018)

Most of the changes are small. Things most eyes wouldn’t notice.

The antique desk that has always sat purposeless by the fireplace, for instance, has finally been made host to a computer. The “sugar and spice” painting of bears playing dress-up in the guest bathroom has disappeared, though three nails driven into the floral wallpaper remember its exitance.

In the corner of the living room is the big change. The change I’ve been dreading for months…

The empty chair.

For the first 24 hours, I am disoriented by it all.

It’s like a new haircut that I can’t keep from checking every time I pass my reflection. How do I feel about this? I ask myself at least 6 times an hour.

I compare things to the way they were. When I was young. When I was older. When it was just the three of us. When she was sick.

I know death is supposed to teach me things. I know loss is supposed to make me stronger. But right now, this loss is making me feel… lost.

Change has never scared me. I have always leapt into its dark abyss smiling on my way because, deep down, I knew that I was tethered. My waist was wrapped tight in a thread of safety that led straight back to here. This never-changing structure. My secret strength.

And she was the center column.

It’s not all gone.

There is still the portrait of John Wayne on the mantle and Pop still winks when he catches my eye. I can still take a deep breath as I step into the creek and fill my lungs with a thousand sacred memories. She’s here in so many ways.

But then there’s that empty chair.

And the haunting absence of her unabashed laughter and my cousin’s boxes on the living room floor. There’s the sorrowful sigh from Pop’s sleeping chest that tells me what I dread to know: it will all fade away.

My lifelong anchor is turning to dust, my ship is beginning to drift and all I can do is ask myself 6 times an hour, how do I feel about this? 

And I feel everything you could possibly think.

And I close both my eyes and breath in.

PART THREE: MOURNING DOVES

(Written on May 1, 2020)

It’s not that I haven’t heard them other places – these soulful coos of a Mourning Dove – but they belong so completely to the house on Sparks Avenue…

For the past few mornings, the familiar cries have caused me to drift for a moment from sleep into the old wooden bed in the pink room. In that secret space before waking I can hear Mamoo muttering quietly to her crossword puzzle and Pop shuffling his slippers across the hardwood floors toward his third cup of coffee.

All of the sounds are soft and humid and kept in time by the swaying oak trees that surround the house like a nest.

Coo-OO-ooo

I wake to a pink wall in a different house – miles away from those cream-filled memories.

A year ago, this room was empty.

I passed through it on my way to Texas and spent a night tossing around on an air mattress trying to find the words to say at Pop’s funeral.

His passing undoubtedly made Mamoo’s more real – sharpening the dull pain I had carried since her death. Gone were the fraying threads that connected me to sleepy, coffee-soaked mornings at 723 Sparks.

Now there were two empty chairs to bear the weight of missing bodies. Now there was everything to mourn.

After the memorial service, as the whole family gathered to down greasy burgers and icy shakes at Dirty Martin’s, I seized a rare moment to return to the house alone. I knew this would be my last time to see it the way I remembered it best.

Climbing the three stone steps to my grandparent’s turquoise door, I prepared myself to feel the sting of many emotions on the other side: sadness, regret, fear.

Instead, as I walked into the silent scent of mothballs and stale coffee, I was filled with an unrelenting peace.

I took a seat on the red and blue couch in the living room and let my eyes wander across every familiar detail in the space…

The pictures of family on the cabinets, the seldom-used bellow by the fireplace, the wicker-topped barstools along the counter, the poorly stacked collection of old western DVDs –  everything was exactly how I remembered it.

It’s not the house. 

The realization filled me like wind in the trees.

Ever since Mamoo passed, I had been fearful of the final change – the broken tether, the endless road of instability. But the love and peace and security I had always felt in returning to 723 Sparks Avenue were not stored in its old bricks and tarnished spoons and creaking floorboards.

The love that sprang from the souls of my grandparents was graciously stored in me. It was anywhere I went and everywhere I was. It’s as untouchable as the song of a Mourning Dove.

Coo-OO-ooo

The red desert rocks outside my window are the very same ones that once delighted my grandparent’s TV as a backdrop for shootouts and wagon trains. It is a barren landscape so different from the lush backyard of 723 Sparks. One would never consider the same creatures to inhabit both spaces.

But here is the cry of that soulful bird that carries me from dreams to memories. Gentle hints of sadness that remind me to be glad, and to love, and to remember.