Four Acres Farm

I drove past my grandparent’s old pale pistachio farmhouse to find the ghost of what it was.  Grandma sold the house after grandpa got dementia and kept wandering off.  He’d been retired for decades but would wake, confused in the middle of the night thinking he was late for work, and grandma would have to fetch him from the yard.  She worried that he’d walk into the busy highway the house was seated against or that he’d stray entirely.  After three years of following grandpa like an ambling toddler, putting bells on the doorknobs to catch him when he left, and the bone-tiring exhaustion of his confusion, she knew she had to sell the house.

My grandparents bought that two-story home for $13,000 more than half a century ago.  They raised 8 kids, milk cows, and enough vegetables from the garden to overflow their pantry shelves. Both grandparents were apostolic, came from a puritan-like way of life where hard work bore the yoke around their necks.  With four acres, their two aging bodies began begging for a relief that they didn’t know how to ask for.  Grandpa could no longer keep up with the acreage and Grandma could no longer keep up with Grandpa, so they sold the house for the practicality of a nursing home. 

Grandma spent her days relieving the nurses of their duties.  She’d feed and bathe Grandpa and buy him wooden trinkets to paint, all while the new owners of the farmhouse moved their belongings in and started gutting the house my grandparents had kept perfectly antique.  The new family was large - 10 children and counting.  Soon, the lawn my grandpa never let get above 2 inches and rolled smooth, was overtaken with weeds and feet of messy-haired grass.  I thought my grandpa might die if he saw it.  Weeds choked out the daffodils in the flower beds nestled against the house.  The same flowers I would cut and vase for my grandma, and her, accepting the childhood sentiment with sweetness, never once letting on that I was ruining her flower beds.

The wooden swing was gone.  The one that overheard the inexhaustible conversations on those perfectly warm nights, or in the midst of a harvest when we all had our paring knives and landed elbow-deep in some vegetable or another.  The new family sold eggs from their chickens.  I would stop sometimes to grab a dozen, and never because I actually wanted eggs.  It was one foot I could keep inside of that house.  I’d step into the garage, pinch my dollars tightly through the rusted metal cash box and walk away empty-handed.  There were oil stains on the floor.  My grandpa would never let his oil leak onto the concrete. 

The garden was still tilled, but half of its warm body was seeded over with grass.  I remember dragging the garden hose that long way.  Taking a wagon full of water buckets when the land was extra thirsty.  Digging into the dirt, tiptoeing around plants as not to smash their potential or break a stalk.  Picking japanese beetles and shaking them in my hand so they wouldn’t velcro to my skin.  Grandma kept a gallon jug of soapy water to put their turquoised pearlescent bodies into.  I felt bad killing them, but my Grandma said they’d destroy all of her beans.  So, in their bodies went.  I’d watch their six little legs, two antennae and wings wiggle in the oil-spill colored water and rub my hands clean of their cling.

My grandpa died after a few years of losing his mind.  The confusion was the worst part.  He was slipping and slipping and slipping until he was gone.  He used to embarrass my grandma so badly with the wild and wonderful dementia-laden lies he told.  If you weren’t his wife you’d find it funny.  Soon enough, he quit painting and eating from his wife’s spoon.  He forgot our names and eventually quit trying to find words that made sense.  Grandma stayed in the home for a while after he died and when her sadness slipped away she rooted into her independence once again.

She moved into a small apartment in the same village that held her farmhouse.  Same road, close enough to look at with longing and grieve over what was lost.  She was happy there.  Found her new rhythm, had raised beds to grow her food because she couldn’t kneel as low now with her bad knee.  She would still call me and tell me to come pick up the applesauce she canned for me.  I should’ve been bringing her food, but that was what made her feel useful.  She’d clip diaper coupons and send them in the mail.  She still had her “cuppa-you-know-what,” strong and black, and still couldn’t believe that I didn't drink coffee.  She’d play the piano and sing hymns in her low alto voice.  Her knobby fingers still worked a ball of yarn into blankets.  She worked feverishly to make sure each great-grandchild had one for their wedding gift.  She started minimizing her things, putting labels to everything so that we wouldn’t have to figure out who got what when she was gone.  She was too practical to die with unfinished business.  She wanted everyone to have something from her and so she’d walk her home like a department store picking the perfect gift for each person.

I drove by the pale pistachio house and it went up for sale again.  The sign in the yard begged my curiosity and I went through picture after picture in the listing while my heart broke in two.  All of the work that the last family started, was left undone.  The bay window where the record player once sat had plaster-crumbled walls, baring the wooden frame that held the old girl up. The carpet had been ripped up and the hardwood floors were still raw.  Mold spots in the basement where Grandma had a second stove and we made all of our Christmas candy.  Mold where my brothers and I would hand off pieces of wood to my grandfather to stack for their wood-burning stove come winter.  Wood stacked so high in our little arms that Grandpa would comment on our muscles and so we’d stack them higher and higher.  

When grandma died, she took a piece of all of us with her.  Her body is marked with a stone slab while that house sits like a tomb.  There is nothing left of my grandparents except that rusty nail at the top of the basement stairwell where Grandma would hang her apron for the night, say her prayers, and rise early tomorrow.