The purpose of our July trip up to the Pacific Northwest was for Xenia and Justin to see my friends and family and the places where I grew up. We also brought Xenia’s friend Tara from Fort Worth, Texas. We spent a few days in my hometown of Vancouver, Washington, at the home of my friend Naomi, whom I have known since we were little kids. I had a super strange experience at church, which will make next week’s scribble. After church we hung out with Melanie, who has been my bestie since middle school, and her mom, who had made her home a backyard paradise. We saw my aunt that evening. On Monday we spent the day at Battleground Lake with Melanie and her husband and ate dinner with Aaron who was one of my lunch buddies in high school. We spent a few days with my uncle and saw tons of cousins. I simply adore Cousin Dylan. It gives my kids a different perspective to meet people who have known me for so long.
After having dinner with Aaron, we all walked up to the family property where I lived from birth to two years old and as a teenager after my parents divorced. It’s now an empty field on a hill. The trees that gave the place character are gone. I gave my children an imaginary tour, loosely waving in the direction of the bushes and gardens that once were there. Nothing marked the locations of croquet matches, rotten apple fights, and grass surfing. The house was burned down to the ground. After neighborhood kids vandalized it beyond repair, my uncle gave the local fire department a place to practice their craft in a burning building. Neighbors report that the burning exercises were going off and on for weeks. Now the outlines of the house and the pit that once was the basement are all that remain. The land lies fallow, waiting for the subdivisions coming, which will allow no space for the memories and ghosts that once had their place there. I made my peace with that reality. I have my stories, and my children have what context I could give them.
Deer saw us and ran away when we walked through the fence. I told the kids about the huge bramble bushes that were so tall we could walk beneath them. Guess what? There’s no thorns inside, so we were safe once we fought past the berries and leaves.
The kids ran to the burned-out pit that was once my house. Tara found a rusty whisk that probably belonged to the family that rented it after we left.
I told the kids to look behind the house. That was where we had rotten apple fights in the autumn. The apples held their shape when we picked them off the ground but were soft and mushy and didn’t really hurt when they hit my sisters. It was kind of like modern day paintball, but instead of colors to mark you, there was a wicked, sweet vinegar smell.
I pointed out the side of the house was where there used to be beautiful ornamental trees. We used to put my nephew Alex on a blanket in their shade when he was a baby and have picnics with Banquet chicken and Jo Jo potato wedges from Bea’s country store. The first time Alex laughed was when a spring breeze blew his baby hair. I guess it tickled. There was a Northern Spy tree which had the best eating apples, and another tree which is where I posed for that one picture I have of myself as a two-year-old. I tried to recreate that picture with Esther when she was one, but there was a hornet’s nest in the ground, and I got stung. We used to build forts with sheets in that tree.
The front of the house used to have flowers and more ornamental trees, and some catnip that the neighbor’s cats used to love to roll in. One time, one of those cats got stuck in our attic after a lightning storm that broke the one window. A neighbor nailed boards over the window, not knowing there was a cat inside. It took weeks to lure that poor kitty down the attic stairs. I named him Cat Hezekiah and later found out that he belonged to my calculus teacher.
The fourth side of our house was the best place to play croquet. We made a vertical wicket drop in that hill off to the side. While we were there, I pointed out the place on the other side of the driveway where the hammock used to be, between a forsythia bush and a japonica tree. The ground dropped off steeply, and it was always terrifying to think what would happen if you fell out of the hammock the wrong way.
Next we headed over to check out the view from the hill. You can see snow-covered mountains on a good day, but it was too cloudy that evening to see that far. Once there was a beautiful maple tree where I have one of my first memories of waiting for my sister to be born. In my memory, someone is holding my hand, and we are watching a sunset. I think my parents sent me to be with Grandma when they were at the hospital, because Ellen’s first years were at our next house. The grass is mowed here, but when it gets to its full height, it must be two or three feet high. After a rainstorm, when the tall grass was all bent down, we would take boards of wood we found around and slide down the hill. We called it grass surfing!
Back down the other way was a line of tall fir trees. Now there’s a neighborhood back there, but there used to be an extensive forest. That’s where I’d do all my tree climbing. Xenia wanted to climb the tree that Mike and I climbed when we were dating, but the lowest branches were now too high. There used to be a grove of birches there too. That was my favorite place to jump tree to tree. I have so many stories of our woods adventures: scaring my sister when I hid inside an empty tree trunk and screaming when she walked past, tying our hands together or stuffing three kids in an adult’s coat and navigating a deer path in some wild wilderness challenge, hiking all the way to Salmon Creek and climbing the cliffs with Melanie. Once I built a fort with broken branches and covered it with some moss. A few months later, I went back and found the moss had grown over the entire structure, and the walls were an opaque green.
The sun was setting when I ended the imaginary tour, and we headed back to the car. Ι turned back towards the house one last time. Darkness had settled on the dim outlines of the ruins that had been seen three generations of my family. Ι thought of the dark memories that the crumbling walls had once witnessed. There had been violence, fear, and want. Mom often did not feel safe at that house and sometimes went hungry. Ι felt safe but very insecure, scared that my single mom wouldn’τ be able to provide for us, ashamed of the charity that let us get by. My siblings, cousins, and Ι have broken many of the generational patterns that bound our parents, but there is still work to do. Looking at the ashes that blended into the night, Ι thought about the house burning to the ground and felt resolution. It is time for the phoenix of future generations to rise. May our children be blessed as they go out into the world progressively healthier than each generation before them.
Over the next week, Xenia, Justin, Tara, and I looked elsewhere to see the flowers and trees that are still part of the Pacific Northwest beauty but no longer decorate the desolate remains of the family property. There were still lakes, waterfalls, rivers, and beaches to show the kids what a beautiful area of the country I lived in. Nothing felt as wild as when I was a child, but there were trees that grew just as tall as in yesteryears and paths to follow through verdant woods. Western Washington and Oregon will always be great places to visit.
Back in Corrales, New Mexico, our property, so close to the bosque along the river, reminds me of the beauty of my childhood home. We have fruit trees and flowers and a beautiful lawn. Something of the family passion for beautiful property still lives on in me. I hope my children will find beautiful places to live when they grow up too.
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