I’m alone in the house.
Not that it’s never happened, this home has been a part of my life since I was 12 and my parents brought us over to see the first house they purchased. I remember turning the corner with the moving truck behind us and seeing all the kids. I was ecstatic.
Summers were spent riding our bikes down the massive hill, swimming in the neighbor's pool, playing softball, baseball, tag, football and anything we came up with in the neighborhood field. (it had perfect placement of trees for bases), summer BBQs, bonfires and waiting until the light came on to head home. All of us piling in the hammock my dad had in the backyard, eventually breaking. We all belonged to the same community pool and most evenings we would be sitting at Karen’s kitchen table, laughing and playing cards.
Today the emptiness is different.
The generations have shifted, we are now our parents' age. Our street is 2 blocks, but the neighborhood was really only one block. All the kids we hung out with lived within viewing distance of each other, and we were all roughly 5 years apart. Today there are new kids riding up and down the street on bikes (including my nephews), playing hide and seek, and selling lemonade. The homes are all smaller, understated and middle-class, mostly 2-3 bedrooms.
The house is quiet in a way it never has been.
I am house and puppy sitting while Mom is off on a 3 week adventure in Europe with her sister. The first time she’s ever traveled out of the country. The photos they have been sending look like they are having an amazing time and is something my mom needed and deserved!
As a family, we never went on big vacations. We had two cross country trips, a wedding and a funeral, the last one I was old enough to help with driving. There were no surprise vacations to the beach or Disney. Summers were spent with cousins and at grandmas. We were what I like to call the 80s American middle class. There were no fancy cars, life was practical.
It was simple.
There are times when I think of dad, I catch the smell of stale cigarettes sometimes when I walk around the house (no one smokes in our family anymore). My brother and I quit a few years ago but occasionally the smell pops up, in something we dug out of the attic or basement as we really clean out the house for the first time.
I’ll be out shopping and someone will walk by wearing old spice or brut and my heart feels like it’s been punched. Watching my brother cook steaks on the grill, taking over that task once handled by our dad. Mom came across the photo album she had made for their 40th and reading the cards he gave her (yes she saved them all) made us laugh and cry. He was SUCH a smartass.
He actually crossed out her signature one year, signed his name and gave it back to her and wrote, I like this one.
It’ll be a year in November.
Still hurts.
