Anna DeStefano's Blog

“I’ll keep the phone with me, in case the police call,” my mom said Easter morning as my husband and I headed out around 7 a.m.

We were counting on early morning quiet and holiday revelry to cloak our nefarious activities. My mother, skeptic and naysayer that she is, had nevertheless provided the tools required for our daring do. And while she wasn’t exactly going to wait at the curb in a getaway car with the motor running, she had our backs. Or at least she had the cash for our bond. Good woman.

My grandmother’s house, you see, was torn down two weeks ago. My grandfather built it for her as a wedding present. Until about ten years ago, my grandfather and grandmother and our family had been the only people to live there. Then my grandmother, by that time a widow for over a decade, needed the peace of mind and available medical assistance of a retirement community. So the family embarked on the long goodbye of helping her pack and take what she could of half a century of living to her lovely new apartment, and the house was sold. And that was hard. But I loved her and was glad letting the place go gave her the means to enjoy the last six years of her life secure and independent, without the hassles and anxiety of property ownership that she could no longer handle.

Which didn’t mean it any easier, passing our family home all these years and watching it and what was once a magnificent, three-tiered, immaculately-groomed (by my grandparents, thank you very much) yard fall into ruin and disrepair. The new owners were renting the place out to whomever would do it the most harm, it seemed, until they could afford to tear the three-story home down and build something modern and “smancy” in its place. You know, in one of the oldest, most historic neighborhoods in town. What else is there to do, when ancient brick and plaster and glass and duct work won’t support all the modern conveniences you have to have to get by?

Not that I’m bitter.

But I digress.

I said farewell to the house a little over a year ago. In fact, it’s sat empty and for sale most of the last two years. I’m not entirely sure if the original buyers are the owners that had the place raised. Or if it did in fact finally sell to someone new. Suffice it say though that a year ago, during my last visit to the property, the paint was peeling and the trim crumbling and the doors warping to the point that the outside basement door that opened inward to what was once my grandfather’s work room in the basement couldn’t even close properly and lock. It was a shock when it opened at my slightest touch. Then it was an invitation.

I decided on that hot summer day to one last time take a tour of this place that no longer belonged to anyone I knew.Yeah. Not smart. But it was clearly deserted and I couldn’t help myself. There’d been too much rush and hurry when my grandmother moved, and I’d had a younger child at home then and little time to hang back and spend grieving properly. So, yeah, a year after my grandmother’s death I walked into the abandoned, dilapidated ruin of some of my best childhood memories and felt myself grow colder and colder with each new room I entered.

There was grafiti on the walls. Both panoramic screened porches–one on the second floor that I’d slept on countless nights as a little girl on this amazing swing that went on for miles and was piled high with fluffy pillows–were in tatters and literally falling off the house. Hardwood floors gouged out in places. Beautiful, original-to-the-home tile work in the bathrooms shattered. And worst of all, all the sounds were the same (of the doors opening and closing and the echoes of my footsteps down her long hallway) but the smells and feels and warmth of it all was gone. My grandmother was gone. Everything that she’d worked so hard to make beautiful and loving and welcoming for me and my family there. Gone. It was a slap in the face. A wake up. So clearly time to let go. And I did, thinking there’d never be a reason to come back. There was nothing left of my “Grand” to know there.

Except…This last Saturday my husband and I walked down to the building site where the foundation for the new house is going in. We stood at the curb looking over the huge lot, down the hill, trying to see what was left if anything that looked familiar.

And there, off to the side! My mother had been wrong. They hadn’t ripped up all the camellia bushes.

They’re trees, actually. (more…)