Chandler Street

My Grandad missed our wedding. He didn't get to meet his great-grandchildren either, but I thought about him on a hot Sunday afternoon in my backyard, listening to our wind chime. Its alto bell tone called me to the back roads of my memory, where I stayed for a while beneath the swaying branches of our Pin Oak trees. 

Grandad is there waiting under the striped, canvas awning that covers the deck behind his and Grandmom's house on Chandler Street--Summer tumblers filled with tea, sweating with condensation that drips onto the glass table, the breeze grazing our skin, and the hum of traffic from the boulevard a few blocks away. We talk about all the latest and the what-will-comes-- Grandad always setting the bar high for me.

The wind chime that hangs from our clothesline was once my Grandparents'. It hung in their serene, little yard, bordered by Grandmom's flower beds that she kept with care and meticulous attention.  A winding brick pathway led into the grass from the one chain link gate.  A sweet, tidy space surrounded by mature shade trees and the chime that sang as we gathered there for egg hunts and cook-outs, birthdays, and anniversaries is now tightly preserved in my mind's eye. It is a cherished haven.

Grandad was a great, many things: a reader, an artist, a cook, a traveler, and a handyman. He exceeded the bar in all of these categories. He cultivated his authenticity and self-made aura into the soil of my soul. I have grandad woven through my bones and threaded into my skin. If I had become a doctor, he wouldn't have lived long enough to know, but I would have fulfilled those aspirations he had for me.. Regardless, he breathed a fire into my lungs while his own withered away from the cancer.  Twenty-four years ago, I lost one of my best friends in the cold, quiet month of October. Yet, even on a hot Sunday afternoon, lost in the soft ring of our wind-chime, I was grateful for all the other afternoons I did have with him. 

I return to these little places, the stories wound around my heart like Grandmother's knitting. I claim them again and again. I am a composition of all these people, and I feel incredibly rich. 

Home is a complex web of people whom we love, spun together in the very sinews that hold our bones together.

No matter how far we go from our beginnings, they find us again in the humblest of moments and suspend our breath. They are sacred spaces that we enter, hushed and reverent.

I find Grandad in the mirror, the way my nose is shaped like his; My wavy hair a little like his own, too. I find him when I cook using sophisticated spices and when I read a poetically haunting book. But if my Grandad were able to meet the children that I helped bring into the world, he might find strands of himself stitched into them as well. Evan--traveling to national parks and capturing nature's alluring beauty through photography..His natural, easy approach to cooking, throwing this and that together, making palatable art. Derek, with his fury of ambition, working his way up the ranks (like a Navy sailor), Brennan-- his keen sense of humor and industrious fervor, Hannah- her classic, no-frills elegance intertwined with a fiery free spirit.

Holding all of them up to the light, I can clearly see his marks, and the way we are layers upon layers of this family tree, sturdy and resilient.

Memories of Grandad slip in quietly when I least expect them. They swell from the deep, settled places in me. I am linked into a story no matter its fractures and flaws, learning how to hold it, and then tell it in my own way.

My grandmom finally sold their house several years ago, their home that we all loved,..but the life they built.. that still goes on and on. The moments we had there and now collectively carry in this world are a gift. No matter how the house changes, we were witnesses to the best part of its story.

Grandad is still mine. He is still beating in my chest and can be traced through my veins.  And although our wind chime has suffered injury through the brutal winter winds, it's nothing a zip-tie can't fix. So, for all seasons, I get to keep my own piece of Chandler Street echoing throughout our very own backyard. 

This essay is lovingly dedicated to Mary Jane and Andy Vanderleeuw