Nostalgia from Across the Room [jacob]

My grandpa lived in a one-story house on a quiet street in Florissant, Missouri—part of North County, St. Louis, and closer to the city than where I grew up. Still, his house, his street were just that: quiet. I think my Grandpa Block, my mom’s dad, prefers to keep things that way. He tries not to impose. We didn’t visit him at his house too often—not as often as Grandma and Grandpa Alagna (Mom’s mom and stepdad) or Grandma and Grandpa Feld (my dad’s parents)—but I remember his house, in flashes, senses, and colors. I remember his house in feelings.

His lawn was well-kept, stiff blades of bright green grass like a giant crew cut, with a paper birch tree, shining white, planted in the center of the front yard. The first tree I’d ever climbed. I can recall visits with my brothers and cousins, playing tag, chasing each other around the yard: racing around the pale concrete bench, hopping on the footpath of circular stones placed around the bushes, and shimmying up the great white tree, accidentally scraping off shavings of bark. It peeled off so easily I had always thought the tree was ancient.

Around back there was a beige shed next to a concrete birdhouse and a small, modest garden in the back left corner, near the fence. After his heart surgery, my brothers and I took turns pulling Grandpa’s old bag-mower out of that shed and trimming his tidy yard. There was a large wooden porch with a grill. In high school I helped sand and stain it, after Grandpa had moved out and my parents had bought the house to rent out for supplementary income.

His house had a distinct smell, not malodorous, but distinct, recognizable. It was the same scent of his car, of his clothes; it was the scent of Grandpa Block. As a kid I had subconsciously attributed the smell to my great grandma, who used to live there before she died when I was in fourth grade. Although I remember her, I do not remember her well: she was kind, restricted in movement, and I felt a little uneasy around her, but I was obliged to greet her and bid her goodbye each time we visited. After she bid us goodbye, the scent remained, and I knew it did not belong to her.

Inside, the house was small, simple. Through the front door was an L-shaped grouping of rooms: the dining-room-turned-office at the base of the L and the living room to the left, stemming toward the back of the house. The dim, little office to the right—a room I scarcely remember being in—had a desk and lamp, probably a bookshelf. A sort of half wall (decorated with family pictures and porcelain figures of Catholicism: saints and Marys and angels) separated it from the kitchen—a room which removed any doubt that the house was not built in the ‘70s. In a “Partridge Family” yellow, orange, and brown motif, the phony linoleum tile floor matched perfectly the floral pattern of the wallpaper—all which coordinated with the faded yellow appliances and brown counters and cupboards. A round, wood table sat in the center of the tiny room with thick, brown-upholstered, rolling chairs around it. Grandpa always had a gallon jug of lemon Gatorade in his refrigerator. I recall drinking it sometimes, out of brightly colored, thick-plastic cups. The first time I ever tried Gatorade was at his house; it didn’t taste as much like Kool-Aid as I’d hoped.

At the right of the kitchen were two doors (one to the garage and one to the basement) placed so close together that opening the door from the garage had the potential to knock a hapless grandchild down the stairs—a design flaw to be sure, but a manageable one. Our parents and aunts constantly monitored the space, yelling for us to slow down and be careful and watch out. Still six grandchildren sprinted down the stairs like maniacs, inventing games and playing with the ping pong table or the miniature basketball hoop—like the type found in arcades: fully equipped with a safety net, a scoreboard, sound effects, and ten tiny basketballs just waiting to be shot (or hurled at one another). I remember disassembling the net, when Grandpa moved out, and giving it away.

Most of my time spent there as a kid was in the living room (the vertical portion of the L). I remember the brown carpet and the burgundy recliner in the corner by the window, eventually replaced by a faded blue one to match the couch against the far left wall, which faced the tiny television set. Toward the back of room was a closet near the hallway that had toys in it; my brothers and I would bring them out into the room and play while the grownups talked. I remember a toy aircraft carrier and handful of planes—all of which ended up at our house—and Lincoln Logs. Grandpa Block’s house was the only place I’d ever played with Lincoln Logs. It wasn’t until after years of playing with them that I first read the container and realized that they were not called “Linkin’ Logs.” That may have been my first recognition of a pun.

Down the hallway, past the closet, was a bathroom on the left, bedecked in various shades of pink: pink tile floor, pink wallpaper, pink shower, pink shower curtain, pink toilet, pink sink, and so on. It wasn’t bright, blinding pink, but something softer, and inviting. Though it always struck me as slightly funny that my grandpa would have an all pink bathroom, now I think that it was probably my great grandma’s idea. Anyway, I had always liked that bathroom.

Further back at the end of the hall was Grandpa’s bedroom to the left and an additional bedroom to the right, which had been converted into many other things over the years—the most recent of which was essentially a combined office and storage room, but I have little memory of either the bedroom or the “multipurpose” room, as a kid. When Grandpa moved the first time, into an apartment to live closer to his then girlfriend, Dee, I was in high school; my brothers and I helped my parents take apart his bed, remove the mirror from his dresser, march the furniture out of my grandpa’s house. Stacks of boxes filled the room across the hall, each weighted with Grandpa’s belongings; one-by-one, we marched them out of the house.

—

Grandpa lives in my parents’ house now, with my mom and dad and two of my brothers. He has the entire basement to himself and doesn’t come up all that often, usually to do the chores my brothers should be doing: washing the dishes or walking the dog. It seems he only leaves the house to ride his bike or go to early morning Mass. He greets me warmly when I come home from college, tells me I look healthy, and then retreats back down the stairs. Usually praying or watching old movies on TV. Still trying not to impose.

In the two years that he’s lived with my parents, I’ve found myself curious about him, more than I ever was as a kid, discovering little details in every interaction and regretting that I hadn’t been so interested before. I might have known that he never attended college, or that he used to play baseball as a kid—and that he was apparently quite good—that he is incredibly kind and prays often, devoted to God out of a love I now admire. I’ve seen firsthand that he cries openly, though silently, during emotional parts of sappy movies, and I’ve screamed with laughter at his comicality, playing games around the dining room table with our family.

And he laughed, too.

He laughs heartily.

He laughs silently.

—

In Grandpa’s old house, in the living room, on the wall just above the couch, hung a painting of which, although it was always present, I only have one distinct memory. My parents had bought the house by this time, so it was mostly empty. My mom was around somewhere cleaning, but I was in the living room standing about where the TV had been, staring at this painting: a rainy day in Paris, France, early 20th Century. A dreary street sparsely populated by umbrella-toting passersby, casually strolling about the Arc de Triomphe. A vivid image, clear from my position. As I approached the painting, however, the streetlights and umbrellas and little, Parisian pedestrians became thick blobs and ridges and rough brushstrokes, wholly indistinguishable from what they had been from across the room.

“That’s amazing,” I said to my mom, passing through the room.

“What?” she replied, halting in transit, gripping a sponge with one latex-gloved hand and some spray bottle of cleaning agent in the other.

“This painting: when you look at it from a distance, it looks so perfect and true-to-life, like it could be a photograph, but the closer you get, the details become blurry and you can’t tell what they are anymore. But,” I mused, “in a sense, it sort of becomes a painting again. You can see all the technique, dots, and mixtures. You know what you’re really looking at from close up.”

Mom nodded and smiled, “Pretty neat, huh?” and continued to the back of the house.