13 Kelwyn
13 Kelwyn
I parked my car in the street to keep it out of frame, and immediately could tell the neighbors were watching. I strode into the road – a short dead end jutting from a cul-de-sac, and snapped one picture of the small white ranch with its black shingle roof. The evergreen and mailbox just barely obscured the living room window, it’s gauzy curtains, and the stories held in the room behind them. The single car driveway, my sister’s car squarely placed, and the wheelchair ramp installed just a few years ago sat just out of frame. I circled the house, leaning and positioning myself just so, capturing the views from memories of my own and others. In a way, this sequence of photographs felt as though I was documenting the change of hands, the continuation of family in this home, not unlike photographing its interior and all my grandmother has left there.
I looked up and caught a glimpse of the neighbors across the street. In most cases, this may be uncomfortable, to say the least. But these neighbors in question, however, are close family friends – Pam and Gary and Brenda have been part of our family’s story since before my father was born and grew up in that house. They’ve intimately seen the entire sequence our family is experiencing. I know them, they know me, and Brenda’s nod of understanding from her living room window meant more than I can say. Her late husband, a photographer, was fond of documenting change in unexpected places. Brenda knows the process well.
***
I stopped at my parent’s house to drop off something of minimal importance at my mother’s request. I needed to get out of my apartment anyway, needing a breath away from the never-ending schoolwork.
My father stopped me in the doorway as I entered. “So! How much time you got?” Well, the whole afternoon. “Good! Come look!”
We leaned over the kitchen table – both of us too stubborn to sit – and combed through documents from the home that was my grandmother’s and is now my sister’s. These papers, yellowing with age, some of them crinkled, one folded into a post-it size square evidently some time ago, emerged from boxes we did not know existed until their unexpected discovery in the laundry room.
The cleaning out of the house produced a number of surprise discoveries, namely items in places they would not normally be kept. A small orange pill bottle full of thumbtacks in the medicine cabinet, birthday cards in the kitchen cupboard, a metal colander under the bed – she had a reason for each of these, but a reason unbeknownst to us, and by then to her as well. Whispers of concern were exchanged over what this may mean for legal documents, for the deed to the house, for the wedding ring with its diamond passed on through generations. My dad and his siblings stepped in, and Mémère agreed that it was best for her to not be living on her own.
My sister closed on the house in the early fall, following a spring and summer of the family taking stock of what Mémère had, and who wished to lay claim to what. Everything left stayed in the house, included above the dotted line.
And so we combed through the sprawled contents of the boxes, a varied and variegated heap on my parent’s kitchen table, surrounded by folders slowly being filled with documents of all shapes and ages, setting aside the occasional heirloom trinket.
***
I pulled into the driveway and parked behind her car – the light had taken forever to turn, so perhaps I sped a bit too quickly down this meek dead-end neighborhood off the main through-way – and held my breath before reaching for my camera bag. The same door faced me, the same curtains laced the windows, fluttering in the breeze of the fan she perpetually kept on. I knocked three sets of two raps, my usual to say it’s me, and my sister swung it open immediately. A slight laugh, and she smiled – “Took you long enough, I’m already making dinner.” I tossed a raised eyebrow and shook my head, “Well, thanks for letting me invade your home… again.”
Three cardboard boxes sat in the corner of the living room, heaped with all that once graced the laundry room down the hall. Mémère’s baubles and bits of ephemera and memoriam that lined the top of the bookcase now piled unceremoniously into a box. The shrine to the Holy Family, its porcelain statuettes of Mary and Joseph, the blonde wood crucifix, the candles, the practical plastic bottle in which Mémère kept her holy water, all sat in a cardboard box on the floor, adjacent to a laptop charger and a yet-to-be-unpackaged printer. I guess I hesitated for a moment too long, staring blankly at the vestiges in a box on the floor, wondering where her collection of rosaries went – “All good?” my sister asked from a mere step to my right. I hadn’t noticed she was there.
Poor composition. Unfocused. Underexposed. I could not reign in control of my camera. The grip felt unwieldy, my palms were too clammy and hands too shaky and eyes too fluttering to focus on constructing an image worth taking. The wallpaper remained the same as last time, the pale maple hardwood floor still reflected warm evening light from the two windows with their buttery linen valences. The bookshelf was empty, as I expected, its top barren. On the tabletop against the wall, on which Mémère had her shrine to the Holy Family, where since Pépère died she had kept his dog eared and marked and worn leatherbound New Testament reader, now sat a small stack of file folders. The new desk sat against the far wall, the rocking chair had been moved to the basement, and a filing cabinet replaced what was once a side table stuffed with embroidery threads and spare hoops. A house becomes a home when it finally fits its residents, and this resident needs an office more than a sewing room and a shrine.
***
My phone buzzes in my lap as I sit in a meeting with my boss, scheduling my next few weeks of work. I whisper shit a little too loud, and she looks up – “everything ok?” I laugh it off, “Oh, yeah, just a text from my mom. I’ll check it later.”
I get back to my car just a bit mentally drained, and tap open the message. Guess who we saw!
A picture. A smiling face, a fluff of white hair, her silver framed glasses, the tan house coat she wore when she got a bit cold despite the thermostat at seventy-five, a floral blouse in her favorite shade of purple that comprised a good third of her closet, Mémère stands in her room at the care home. Her glider rocking chair sits tucked next to her bed, the quilt from home is draped over the back and cushion. One of her rosaries lays on the side table, just barely in frame, with her spare glasses, a glass of water, and her bible. But the white walls hum with a clinical intensity, the linoleum tile floors reflect no warmth. It is her room, but the room is not her. And she stands with her arm linked with my dad’s, and he leans into her shoulder, holding her steady, both of them with beaming smiles. Dad’s eyes are red, his cheeks a bit damp.
My breath catches in my throat, my hand instinctively covering my mouth in surprise. All I can think to reply is simply You got to see her!
I open the picture again. It’s been over a year since she’s had any visitors – the care home had closed visitation for health concerns in the face of the pandemic. They kept the memory care center closed for a bit longer, as the residents couldn’t quite grasp the precautions and protocols.
A new message buzzes. Yes, they’re starting to open visitation. Two visitors at a time, so we can’t go all at once and you have to schedule it. Your dad wants to take you soon!
Over a year since I have seen her. Over six months that I have been just four miles away but unable to visit, unable to tell her that I’m here, that I’m not gone, that I love her. Over a year since I’ve sat with her as she tells me a story and goes on about her friends I don’t remember or people I’ve never met but she speaks of as though I’ve seen them daily for decades. Over a year since I’ve held her hand and thought of the love and care and intention she has put into everything she has made in her kitchen and sewing room in that small white ranch with its black shingle roof on a short dead end jutting from a cul-de-sac. Over a year since I’ve known if she still knows me.
Another message from my mom.
She remembered your dad as he walked in the door.
