Moving the Memories from My Grandparents' House

Written July 2010 

Memi B, Martha Stephens Bernard, and Clay Foster Dillon, 2009

In the scorching brightness of a July afternoon my mother shifts through bones left undisturbed since the last time someone went searching for an old ledger. Through the Great Depression, world wars, births and deaths, graduations and funerals, scraped knees and cancer, the federal tobacco buyout, prayers and blessings, fist fights and kisses, homecomings and partings, the decline of the American small farm, the growing up and moving away of generations of children, and a thousand friendships, they have accumulated.

And, now they must be moved.

My mother exhumes the ghosts of Chihuahua dogs and litters of kittens. The braying of donkeys at the setting of a thousand suns across the 40 acres that were my great-grandfather's birthplace. The cocky morning song of a long-dead rooster who never imagined that he too would grow old. Birds that returned summer after summer - and their fledglings after them - to lay eggs in the same tree whose branches beaconed children, now grandparents, to their tiptop branches. Hummingbirds that sipped at generous supplies of sugarwater, mixed by Memi over a hot stove on June mornings. And stingy summer breezes that stole their way into the screened windows of the bedrooms to light for just a moment on the clean sheets that had line-dried during a trip to the library.

Scary stories are stored in the attic and genealogy lurks in hidden corners. Countless meals - new potatoes, a pone of cornbread, milk warm from the cow, eggs gathered with the dew still on the grass, and coffee always brewing - haunt the kitchen, as the radio under the sink gives an update on the latest news from around the county. The land holds the memories, like seeds that might come back to life, of gardens tilled, cows milked, colts born, tobacco harvested and flowers planted.

How can all of this be put into boxes in the few days before the tenants move in? How call of this be loaded into the bed of a pickup truck and hauled to the landfill?

Can you put into boxes the neighbors who gathered in the morning hours on the nights the sky turned purple and the radio warned of tornadoes? Can you pack up Papa and Memi on their knees, praying through the night for a wayward child or the healing of a baby? Can you move the feel of the prickly grass under the bare feet of children, and the spot where Papa put on his white gloves to march in the parade? Where will we store the hours that Papa spent writing in his diary and the stories that were told over the old blue phone that held you captive with its cord? What about that number, the one we called for 50 years, seven digits that never changed and that were always answered "Bernard residence" at the other end.

All that we were and could become still remained in those old bones, like the cobwebs of tiny spiders where the wall meets the ceiling in a room that isn't used often.

You could walk through the now sparse house and imagine that Uncle Silas and John Henry would still be at the back door for coffee before daylight. Wearing his dirty work boots, Uncle Silas would mix his sorghum and butter and spread it over warm biscuits. John Henry would roll his own smokes and tell the little girl with sleep still in her eyes that she could have a little cup of Joe.

Even if there were not footfalls down the hallway, you could pretend that Memi might be up before daylight to start breakfast for the farmhands. Although you knew the house would be lonely, you could imagine that Papa might sneak into the kitchen for a cup of milk and crackers at midnight and lay out his cards for a game of solitaire when his sleep was stolen.

The kitchen table and chairs, the books and cook pots, the couch and stereo, the pictures on the wall and even the sewing machine that clothed children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can be moved and packed and stored - even thrown out. But, where do you put these friendly ghosts? How do you keep them safe and know that you can find them again if you ever need to visit them to remember who you were and who you are?