Tonight I am sleeping in the red room at my grandma’s house. This is the den of the Victorian house that my mother grew up in, the room where the stockings were hung over the fireplace and the location of our yearly Christmas singing program, forced upon the youngest able cousins. Stockings are no longer hung over the fire place, as since my grandpa died its been to hard for my grandma to celebrate here in her house in Wausau. I used to be afraid to sleep in this room, but when I did, I made sure to never sleep looking towards the staircase, as that’s where my mother said she saw the ghost of her grandmother walk down.
Staying in this house reminds me of a different ghost, the ghost of the my childhood. I have so many great memories of this house. It saddens me that near the bottom of the endless sidewalk stairs there now lies a for sale sign. I feel like part of me is for sale too. Its hard to describe how truly great this house is. Each room is painted a different color and referred to by its color. Besides the red room, there is the blue room (a sitting room), the pink bedroom, the yellow bedroom, a green dining room, the vivid red sewing room and a recently painted yellow hallway. The grand staircase that my great grandmother supposed walked was used as a support for our giant marble tunnels (the small glass balls, not the stone), with the upper stairs second landing acting as our launching point.
There is also the telephone alcove with its bench I used to sleep on as the Easter Bunny tiptoed around me hiding baskets. I could tell a story about every nook and cranny of the house, even the outside. I cannot begin to describe the feeling of sitting on the screened-in front porch during a summer storm, putting together a puzzle beneath the hot air balloon lamp, safe from the lightening and rain. Or sleeping out there during an especially hot summer night. There’s the basement, which always used to scare me as a child, which held our games and julekake that we ate every Christmas. Opening presents under the tree in the blue room. Sleeping on the floor of the sewing room with my siblings and cousins, watching movies on Christmas Eve after the littlest ones had gone to bed. Sitting on the radiators in the kitchen on cold mornings (every morning in Wausau is cold), having to switch seats every few minutes when my bum got too hot. Washing dishes after meals with the women signaled a milestone of growing up.
It makes me sad that my children will not be able to experience the house like I have, that they will only be able to hear the stories and look at the pictures. They will never almost break every bone of their body riding down the cracked sidewalk on an overcapacity red wagon (maybe that’s a good thing) or listen to The Polar Express snuggled up with two other kids and a grandma in the yellow room or have their own kid-sized bed in the pink room, listening to the train pass the station in the middle of the night.
Every time I come to the house now, I take pictures, trying to hold on to a part of me that will soon be lost. All I can try to do is preserve the memories of this great house and most importantly, the memories of this loving family that I am so thankful to be a part of.
