They’ll always remind me of this little house on College Street, I think. The place where we first moved in together–where we celebrated our wedding and brought Ava to life. The place where we yelled and cried and laughed together. It has a big old maple tree in the front yard that fills our living room windows with watery green sunlight in the summertime. And the small backyard offers up a riot of peony blossoms each spring–white, raspberry red, and the palest of pinks. I’d cut them by the armfuls and shake the ants off in our kitchen sink, saturating the house with the delicate scent of spring, mixed with the sun-drenched smell of our warm wood floors.
They’re Laura’s peonies, actually, but I like to think of them as her gift to me. Her connection to this house. Her life, still blooming forth somehow.
Laura Memler and her husband, Lloyd, built this 1,000-square-foot bungalow in 1927 and moved in after their wedding. They raised two boys in this house, hosting a houseful of bridge partners each Saturday evening and parking their Model T in the driveway. Laura cooked at the old, white Roper stove, and Lloyd sat out on the porch, smoking and sipping the homemade wine he brewed. They had a dog. They planted flowers. They lived a life together, until Lloyd died in the 60s, and their boys grew up and moved out. Laura stayed on, driving herself to the store and mowing her lawn. She was, after all, a strong, proud Czech woman with family living nearby. She survived on her own just splendidly. Each year, her maple changed color and dropped its leaves. The peonies bloomed and died. And Laura grew older. Then, one day, she fell down in her house. And then she fell again, the firefighters breaking in to help her. And her sons, who loved her very much, decided it was time for her to leave this little house. She was in her 90s, after all, and it wasn’t safe for her to stay anymore. But it hurt her so much to go. She didn’t want to leave the place that held all her memories and secrets. All her love and hope and sorrow and fear.
After she gave up her house to me, a stranger, in 2003, I began to visit her in the nursing home, going to see her every month or so until she died, a year ago, at nearly 102 years of age. I’d sit in her room, and listen to her fantastic stories about our house. She told me how a local bootlegger sent men into the house while she and Lloyd were at work, allowing the bootlegger to copy their house’s exact design and build an identical one next door. She told me about going into labor at home and rushing to the hospital. She told me about the landscape of our neighborhood in the 30s and 40s–and she gossiped about her old neighbors. Sitting in her tiny, hot room at the nursing home, listening to her words rushing past me, I thought, “This is my future.” She had such a full, rich life, filled with children and stories and gossip, and it passed so quickly . . . it passed so quickly.
We’re moving out this weekend–bound for a house just up the street. This house will still be here, but it won’t be ours anymore. I won’t be able to run through the front door, letting the screen bang shut behind me. I’ll have to close my eyes to remember the way the early-morning light brightened our dining room. To recall the hum of our tiny 1960s fridge, neatly tucked into the kitchen wall. To remember the familiar pattern of scratch marks that Laura’s dog left on our doorframe. To recollect the dark embrace of our living room as I sat on the couch in the middle of the night, wearily nursing our daughter and feeling the milky fullness of grace and fear and promise.
Yesterday, I noticed that one of Laura’s peony bushes had bloomed already. It’s the one by the garage, with the raspberry blossoms–the one that she told me always blooms by Memorial Day. She was right. And tonight, I plan to cut those blossoms again. I will shake off the ants in our sink. And I will arrange them in a vase, so that I can smell spring in this house one last time. And so that Laura can, too.