Throughout my life, an image of a sweet little Cape Code style house has on occasion floated through my mind. I see myself as barely more than a toddler exploring the yard and discovering to my great surprise that the house is on the edge of the world! The grassy area is enclosed by a fence, but through the wire mesh of the fence I see an enormous hole…the biggest and deepest one I have ever seen in my young life. Each time the pictures play across my brain, they are accompanied by the feeling that I was supposed to live there, but I know the various places I lived as a child and the memories don’t match up with any of them.
I thought perhaps this was a sort of Freudian dream that had some importance to understanding my psyche. But, once when I described the house and yard to my mother, she shrugged and said, “Well, we almost lived in a place like that once.” Although she offered no further details, I decided that it wasn’t symbolic of anything….that it was a genuine memory.
One of my uncles was the last survivor of his generation, and as he approached the end of his life, he reminisced about many things. Without me asking any questions, he shared one day that my parents had planned to move to a little house located right on the edge of a quarry. My father had actually made a purchase offer and down-payment on the house. When he took my grandparents to see it, his father was horrified. He said, “You cannot move that little child into this house. It is too dangerous.”
My father, being young, freshly out of World War II and struggling to establish himself, protested that he had already made a payment and couldn’t afford to lose the money. According to my uncle, my grandfather gave my father the amount of the down-payment, so that he would not move me into that house.
My grandfather was not a wealthy man. He was a blue-collar worker who had raised his family in the Depression. He died at the age of 69, when I was only 6 years old. My memories of him are few and not as intense as those of the other three grandparents who lived until I was a “tween.” I do remember that he took me for long rides in my wagon, and that he had a hearty laugh.
To these, I now add and treasure the memory of his concern for me.
