Essay 3 - Revised

A House is My Memory

                We always called it “Nanny’s house”, even though she and Pop always lived there together. I don’t think that people often consider the meaning of home, at least in the old country definition like “where the heart is”. We didn’t live at Nanny’s house, but it was still my home for many years. If I think back to my childhood, I don’t remember a lot of conversations or events. I don’t remember my day-to-day life. I don’t remember almost anything about school. But, if I think about Nanny’s house, I can remember almost every little detail – every color, every smell, every sound. I remember a house.

The kitchen wasn't just the place to cook chicken paprikash or peach cakes. It wasn't just a place to keep a line of duck-shaped ceramic candy jars filled with sugar-coated gummy mint leaves and Woerther's butterscotch, which I would sneak in and eat when Nanny wasn't looking. The kitchen was where the kitchen table was, of course, and the kitchen table was the center of our family. On the kitchen table, we could peel potatoes together and make silly jokes in preparation for the giant pot of mashed potatoes (with, as my mom will always recall, "a WHOLE STICK of butter!!") or break out the Scrabble board or playing cards or dice because there were only 10 channels and the Yankees game was on a rain delay. My sister and I would do our homework after school on that table, while we waited for Mom and Dad to get out of work and pick us up. Sometimes the whole family would visit the house during the summer, and the adults would sit around the table shooting the shit; I remember sitting on Pop's lap and not understanding their conversation about politics or the economy or whatever-it-was. The kitchen was the first room we'd go to in the house, despite having to pass through the living room and dining room to get there, because it was home even though we didn't live there all the time. My sister and I would run in - dripping wet in the summertime after we jumped through the sprinkler to cool down - to grab some iced tea from the fridge before running outside again in the big back yard. 

The dining room was uneventful, usually. The massive table would collect junk - bills, tchotchkes, Pop's projects that he'd "work on next", and any number of things throughout the year. On Thanksgiving Day, though, it would be ceremoniously cleared off to make space for dinner. There would be so much food. Of course there was turkey, but that was probably the least important thing. Nanny would get up early the day before to start preparing - her famous creamed spinach, extra extra EXTRA stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, and pies...chocolate, apple, pumpkin, and my favorite, lemon meringue. The dining room table would be so overflowing as we all gathered around it, that some of the food had to be placed on top of the wooden radiator case to make room for our plates, and we'd eat until we were almost sleeping at the table. As mom and nanny packed it all up at the end, they'd make a million containers for us to take home and we'd be eating turkey for weeks. The stuffing was always gone first.

I probably spent half of my childhood in that living room. The walls were wood paneled and crackle painted, making all of my childhood pictures look so typical of the early 80s. Often, my sister and I would beg to sleep over on a Friday night, and since my parents worked all week, it was probably a nice opportunity for them to rest in a quiet house. Nanny always let us stay up late - we'd watch the Yankee game all the way through, even if there were extra innings that lasted 'til after midnight. I can still hear her voice in my head yelling at the tv, "come on, Knobloch!", as if her cries would help him hit the ball out of the park. Pop would pull some old mattresses downstairs and we'd set up camp down there, and Nanny would make snacks. She'd sit on that same spot on that old pink couch that was so worn you could see the outline of her body in it even when she wasn't sitting there. Pop would hold his ground in the old recliner, but he'd always go to bed early and then my sister and I would fight for the privilege to sit there. When I stayed home sick (or "sick") from school, I'd sit in the recliner all day and Nanny would make me soup and we'd watch The Price is Right and laugh at how bad everyone did on the show. There was no air conditioning in the house, so in the summer the windows would be open and the old pull screens would keep the bugs out and the curtains would blow gently with the summer breeze. For Christmas, Nanny would put up their artificial tree in the corner, with the multi-colored electric star topper, and what seemed like millions of gifts would overflow beneath it. The huge, heavy door that lead out to the front porch was so big that when I was a kid, I needed Pop's help to open it. 

Ah, the front porch. Pop had built the big, Southern-style wooden porch for Nanny to sit on way before I was born, but it was still her favorite place when it was warm. There were enough chairs for the whole family to sit on, and when I was really little my brown rocking pony was out there, too. Sometimes Pop would pull out the folding card table and we'd all play rummy together if it wasn't too windy. If we didn't feel like playing, Nanny would play a few games of solitaire to pass the time, all the while smoking cigarettes and what did she drink? Maybe it was coffee or tea, I don't remember, but she'd always have a mug of something out there with her. My sister and I would chase each other around in the front yard, which was a small hill that sometimes we'd roll down, having races to see who could get to the bottom first. There was a tiny tree, it looked like a shrunken Christmas tree, which my father had planted when he was a teenager and had expected to grow into a giant. It never got any bigger. We would jump over it again and again. A stone driveway wound around the side of the house and into the backyard, where at the end stood a ramshackle garage that always smelled like a swamp. You always knew when someone had pulled in, because the stones would crack against each other at the weight of the car. Nanny would hear the steps of the neighbor kids walking through her backyard, even though they knew they weren't supposed to, and she'd run out on the front porch to yell at them. 

From the living room, I could race up and down the stairs – the jagged walkway to the upstairs rooms. There were three stairs, then a landing with a china cabinet built-in into the corner, then 10 more stairs unfolded to their left, then another landing, then 5 more stairs that turned left once again, and then the hallway where the bedrooms were. The china cabinet was a place where Nanny kept her memories - little gifts she’d received from Pop over the years or from my dad and his siblings when they were kids. She collected these ceramic bird music boxes, and I remember sometimes she’d let me play with them. I liked to wind them up and let the tinkling song get gradually slower and slower until it stopped, and I could wind up another bird to do it all over again. The birds looked out the glass panels in the cabinet, which smelled like perfumed dust. Their faces looked frozen in time, unintentionally forlorn but forcefully happy; they were kind of weird, but she loved them, so I did, too. In the bottom of the cabinet, Pop’s Navy lamp and a naughty ashtray with a naked lady on it collected more dust than anything. When I took the lamp out, Pop would tell me stories about the ships and what it was like in Italy in the 1950s. Then I’d go back to playing with the birds.

Sometimes, we'd get to play in Nanny's bedroom. If it was bingo night, she'd be getting ready - setting her hair, putting on makeup, checking for runs in her stockings. It was a special occasion for me, too, because I got to play with her perfumes. She had a mirrored tray on her dresser with so many different perfumes in pretty little bottles that I'd spray all over myself. It felt like I was a grownup or a princess or something because I was playing with fine things instead of my baby toys. I have a few of them now, and when I come across them, I can't help but test them, even though I wind up smelling like floral rubbing alcohol (it turns out, of course, that the perfumes were not nearly as “fine” as I remember them). There was a crawl space behind Pop's dresser where they stored decorations and old things and I always wanted to go in but Nanny always said it was dangerous or that we didn't have time for it. Their bed was old and worn, a dinky metal frame that looked out of place. It was the only thing that really looked poor, even if they always really were.

There was a huge, clawfoot tub in the bathroom, where I'd take bubble baths when I'd sleep over. They never had a shower head installed, because Pop never "got around to it" in the 30 years they lived in the house. Nanny would always have different scents of Calgon to "take her away", like the old ad went. At night, Pop's dentures would sit in a cup next to the sink in some blueish-greenish liquid. My sister and I would look at them and giggle, half wanting to play with them and half being too grossed out to touch them. Uncle Tom used to fall asleep in the bathtub, and we could hear him snoring from all the way in the basement. Nanny would bang on the door to get him to wake up, and we could hear him jerk in surprise, splashing water all over the floor (and inevitably leaving it there for her to clean up). That's what teenagers were like, she'd say, a complete pain in the ass.

Across from the bathroom was Uncle Tom's room. Uncle Tom still lived with my Nanny and Pop when I was a kid because he wasn't much older than us. (He's 12 years older than me, and 17 years younger than his older brother, my father.) His room was always messy - blankets and pillows strewn about, video games and wires all over the floor, empty Pringles cans and nudie magazines stuffed lazily under the bed. When my sister and I got bored of our toys and there was nothing on tv, we'd sneak up to Tommy's room and play his Super Nintendo. She always cheated at MarioKart. Eventually Nanny would figure out what we were up to and yell for us to come back downstairs so she could watch us and so that Tommy wouldn't get mad that we were in his room without asking. 

There was a basement in the house, too. It was packed full of boxes and old furniture on one side, and the giant hot water heater that always made spooky noises at night. The other side was Pop’s work bench – baby food jars and coffee cans filled with every size and shape of nut and bolt you could ever use for anything. He’d stick a piece of masking tape on each jar, and use his old fashioned penmanship to neatly describe the contents. On rows and rows of shelves, the jars and cans were all lined up orderly, so even if nobody else could make sense of it, Pop could find whatever he wanted down there in a matter of seconds. If something needed fixing, Pop was your man. The anal retentive neatness probably came from his time in the Navy, but his handiness came from years of roofing, construction, and plain hard work. Most of the furniture in the house had been fixed by Pop at one time or another, so if you looked closely, you’d find the knob he’d rigged out of some weird metal piece or the wooden shim he’d shoved underneath the cupboard to keep it even. Nothing was ever really new because back in his day, Pop would say, you learned how to take care of what you already had.

When Nanny and Pop decided that they'd sell the house and move into an apartment, it was devastating. The apartment wasn't the same - it didn't have my kitchen, my dining room, my memories. There was no clawfoot tub or big backyard; they left behind the big pink couch and would never have space for the big Thanksgiving. A couple years later, Nanny was gone, too. I check the real estate papers from time to time for Piscataway, hoping that whoever owns the place now has put it up for sale. I'd give anything to live there.