To Grandmother's House We Go...

The house my dad grew up in has stories covering every inch of it. The bedroom at the top of the stairs is where my dad started a fire when he was 4. The cops used to park in the driveway when they were coming inside to tattle on the childish antics of my aunts and uncles. The kitchen table was for card games or eating, but never at the same time.

There's a thousand and one memories tucked away in the corners of this place, and every trip uncovers a new one. I'm the second child of a man who comes from a family of twelve kids, meaning cousins were in no shortage growing up. I was scattered somewhere in the middle, far from the first to do much of anything. It's like Middle Child Syndrome on an entirely new level, really. I desperately wanted my family to acknowledge me when in reality, I was one of 50+ kids running around at reunions.

My grandma's doing this thing where she's going through all of her photographs and sorting them by the kids included, and tonight, she handed me a photograph I didn't even know existed. I have one, maybe two pictures with my grandfather who died when I was six. The man was terrifying, and my only real memory of him is hugging him goodbye as he laid in bed hooked up to an oxygen machine. Right before we went in his bedroom, my dad told me it would probably be the last time I ever saw the man. Needless to say, six years old is a pretty early age to understand death, but I knew that the tears I was crying were in order.

Tonight, my grandfather appeared in various photographs I flipped through. I saw him with his arm around my grandma's waist, him in his military uniform, and for the first time, him holding a five month old version of myself. He's not scolding me, he's looking at me like I'm something special. I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry, because I most certainly did. I guess at six years old, I didn't realize how much he loved me, but now I definitely do.