Another expert of Growing Old With Gracie...
MEMORIAL DAY
REWIND
Memorial Day means that cars will line Cemetery Road. It’s a beautiful, clear and warm spring day and I am awake early and I watch out the window as more and more cars park above our house and up the road as far as the eye can see. I stretch. If a thought bubble were to be above my head it would read, “I am so happy!” Today marks the beginning of a summer vacation -- from school-- that will last forever (in my eight-year-old mind, that is). The anxieties of school will disappear for a time and I will be playing outside, climbing trees, sleeping in, and doing whatever I want, whenever I want. No rules apply for summer. Leaving the house in the morning and not coming home till pitch dark is acceptable. I have no plans for today. My brother is awake early too, and he is sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes. If I do not speak to him he will not speak to me, therefore we will have no reason to fight with one another.
The wringer washer hums and swishes back and forth, clothes, suds and water. It rests in the middle of the kitchen floor where mom has pulled it from the corner for wash day. As I walk outside the screen door slams behind me and I see Mom hanging clothes on the line. Her cotton dress catches a breeze, and beats against her legs. The smell of lilacs, the warm air, the green, full lush trees, and the band that can now be heard in a distance just up over the hill for Eckhart’s Memorial Day service, all indicate that summer starts now. I breath in deep the smell of the best day of the year. It’s a lazy and kind day on Cemetery Road. One I would store in a time capsule and release at a future time if it were possible. I love today.
One of the memes on facebook asks, Who tells their dog they’ll be back when leaving to go somewhere? I raise my hand.
“We’ll be back,” I tell Gracie.
It’s early. Wait. You don’t usually leave the house this early, is there a problem? Should I worry? Can I go with? Stop! You are destroying my habitual lazy morning of laying on the couch with my people routine!
Gracie looks confused as Gary and I scurry out the door shutting her out and heading up the road to the cemetery. Memorial Day remains a fond memory in my heart and once again I have convinced my husband to accompany me to the service just ten minutes away.
We stop at Mom and Dad’s gravesite just up over the hill from where we used to watch the activities from our home. I can see our house from where I stand. I survey the hill, the one where the drunken man used to fall into the berry bushes and Mom would instill in us fear, “Don’t go outside! Old Man Tucker is drunk out there!” We’d watch him take a swig from his bottle, swaying as he walked and eventually fell into the thick weeds along the side of the road. We were taught to fear him, though he was quite harmless. I smile, remembering some of Mom’s silly, old fashioned ways and think she’d never survive in this politically correct time of life now. It’s peaceful here. The grass has been mowed nicely and the scent and feel of spring fills the air.
“I wish I would have stopped and got Mom and Dad some flowers,” I say. Maybe next year. I don't really believe she would even know. But, what if? “Sorry, Mom and Dad,” I say, just in case. They would understand. Neither of them were into material things. It would be more like… “Well, you visited and that’s all that matters.” I imagine that Mom can see me there, looking down upon her grave and then turning my glance to our house over the hill. Somehow the two seem to go together. Mom, Dad and our house. Right there in panoramic view where they all belong.
I watch an ant march completely around the border of my blanket as if he is on a mission to complete a lap, not turning back nor wavering. Staying the course and marching forward. Life is like that, I think. We must never stray far from the beaten path. We must remember where we came from and where we are going. March! March! March!
It’s about time you guys are home! Sorry I had to rip open your coffee filters and scatter them throughout the living room… but a voice in my head said, go for it! You needed to be taught a lesson.
