This Christmas, I’m thinking of the place I can’t go back to. It’s hard to say goodbye to anything after 50 years. Certainly a person. But what about a house? I’m here to tell you that it’s possible to love a physical place almost as much as a living being.
I visited my grandparents’ rural Texas homestead for the last time this summer. As I drove away in my rental car and the house got smaller in the rear-view mirror, the memories exploded in my mind, like a near-death encounter where your life supposedly flashes before your eyes. My first encounter with Santa Claus happened here (dad dressed up with a terribly fake white beard and itchy red suit). And a few years later, the sad realization that Old Saint Nick wasn’t real (after the muddy costume materialized during the cleanup from a devastating flood).
I had been coming to this house since I was born in 1970. Because my childhood was spent in South Carolina, we usually only visited twice a year — which only made the visits more special. My grandfather, Papa Jack, died in 2001, and we lost my grandmother, Mama Red, in 2010. But even after her passing, their house remained a frequent destination, a place to stay for family reunions, funerals and fishing-trip getaways. Like many adults, my father wanted to keep his parents’ house in the family. So it sat mostly unchanged for 15 years, host to increasingly infrequent visitors. This year, it was finally time to let go, probably one of the hardest decisions my dad, now 80, had to make.
Saying farewell to a family home is a common experience for many of us in our 50s, as one generation passes assets on to the next. Unless an heir moves into the property, it becomes a second home to upkeep — complete with property taxes, maintenance and countless other expenses. Surveys show that 70 to 75% of adults sell the homes inherited from their parents. For many of us, these houses aren’t just assets to inherit. They are magical places where we grew up and where one generation transferred its knowledge and wisdom to the next. For me, it’s where I learned about art, animals, food, politics, patriotism … everything really. It was a house that changed a lot over the decades, and yet always remained the same.
It was a place that had a particular smell that I still mightily regret being unable to identify. Was it a cleaning product or the scent of my grandmother’s perfume or hand lotion? Some combination of scents? I don’t know but I do know that it was always there — until it wasn’t. The scent slowly dissipated in the years after Mama Red’s passing. This olfactory ghost haunted me every time I visited in the years since. I long to someday encounter it again and solve the mystery. My grandparents wed near the end of World War II, with Jack just back from Italy with war wounds to show for it. Before long, they cobbled together enough money to buy a small ranch right on the Brazos River in Crystal Falls, Texas, where they would raise their only child, my father, Mike. After a few years, they replaced the original farmhouse with a modern brick structure.
The land was income then. Jack raised beef cattle. Pecan trees provided an annual crop. The land was also fertile, thanks to the river, which provided countless fish dinners. There was always a garden with tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. Jars of sun tea brewed on the hot porch. Mama Red held court in the kitchen, always stirring a pot of red beans or chicken and dumplings. Papa Jack indulged his grandsons, staying up til midnight to watch the new Michael Jackson “Thriller” video. In the summer, there were cookouts. Neighbors dropped by with homemade chocolate cream pie. Our great aunts showed up in their big Buick filled with lavish presents, coolers full of beer and so many cigarettes. There were fireworks to be set off — with buckets of water nearby in case the pasture caught on fire. Those same buckets were used to fetch water from a hole cut in the frozen river one Christmas when the pipes froze.
The house was filled with paintings by friends and Mama Red herself, an amateur artist and art teacher. Chairs were painted bright colors, some of the walls were pink. Books about art, collectibles and literature were everywhere and shaped my interests in life. For my brothers, the outdoors was more interesting: cows, giant grasshoppers, rattlesnakes, scorpions, roadrunners, alligator gars and the rare Texas horned lizards. While it’s sad to think about losing this special place, I take consolation in knowing that it was purchased by a dear family friend — someone who my grandparents loved and someone who I know will cherish the place as much as we did. In the end, all we have is memories. I have the best ones.
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