A wooden house
It was somewhere in between late morning and early afternoon, and I didn’t have much to do, when I wandered into the Colonial Village, a part of Ames, Iowa, full of old-style wooden buildings, and suddenly stopped before a house there. There were thick trees around, and the sunny spots shone on the wooden walls, mingled with the deep shades of green and black from the leaves. I stood there, smiling, staring and felt almost like crying. I often feel like it when I see a small wooden house, because there are so many memories…
I remember playing in the garden that my grandmother didn’t really care for. It was a sunny day, and the flowers were tall among the tree-trunks. I must have been four years old or so, and the warm smell of the soil made me happy. Two years later the same garden looked so tiny to me, and grandmother said it had always been that way. “It’s high time your father cut down those trees” – she said, - “before they fall down one windy night”. I looked at the trees, wondering why someone would ever want to destroy their majesty, and astonished at how small the place seemed all of a sudden.
She was a very kind woman, my grandmother. I remember how one day I broke her favourite old plate, and there I was, expected to be told off for having done that. My mother would certainly tell me some home truths! But granny just looked at the pieces of glass and said: “It’s OK, it’s OK”. Next week, when I broke yet another plate, I came up to her, patted her on the arm and said “It’s OK” in the same reassuring tone. And she only smiled back at me.
I was too young to go to school, both my parents worked and I spent days with her. I needed to sleep in the afternoons, and she would lull me to sleep telling stories or just doing some housework. But she would always tell me that if she was not there when I wake I only needed to knock on the glass of the front door, and she would come. She always came.
Her house was about a mile away from ours, and there was a railway between. I was not allowed to cross it as sometimes people were run down by the trains. But one day, when I was about six, I left home and walked all the way, crossing the railway and coming into the small garden. “I’ve brought you some matches for the Russian oven”, I said, and grandmother was both worried and happy to see me come on my own. She had just baked my favourite cake that day.
Near the house she kept a kitchen garden where she grew potatoes. We all hated the weeding and the digging which we had to do, because she was growing too old for that. And we all enjoyed baking new potatoes in the ashes of an autumn bonfire. When we decided not to grow potatoes any more, grandmother could not understand how someone could leave the land waste. But there was nothing to be done about it.
When I was ten, my father died. My mother worked even more to keep the family together. Those were hard times for Russia, with little food in the stores, and few things that our money could buy. I still cannot understand how grandmother managed to save some money from her tiny pension to give it to me and my elder brother. I changed a lot then, being unhappy most of the time, and sometimes I wanted to be left alone. I refused to speak with anyone, and now I know how much it must have hurt her. She never mentioned it though.
I grew, and more and more often I would come round to help with the housework. There was snow to be cleaned off the path, the wood to be chopped for the oven, the chicken to be fed. She asked me sometimes who I loved more, her, or my other grandmother. How can anyone answer such a question?
The older I grew, the more I liked the small wooden house, with its smell of some old perfume, the leaves above my head in the yard, the already practically non-existent flowers and the gaggle of geese from the neighbours’ barn.
Soon after grandmother turned seventy-nine she started to plan her eightieth party. She did not want to invite many people, but she would be so happy to celebrate. It was then that my mother, who is my granny’s daughter and a doctor, told me that granny had cancer, and that an operation would be pointless and would only prolong the suffering.
On my twentieth birthday she was already very weak. She could hardly speak, and when I came into her room (of course she was staying with us then!) and told her it was my birthday she only managed to say “How… what…” and I knew she was worried because she had no present for me. I asked her to say “Happy birthday”, which she did.
Next morning I went back to the university, and five days later, when I was getting ready to go back home, mother phoned and said that granny was dead.
I did not cry. I was too old for that, and there were too many things to be done for the funeral. But I have never seen her house ever since. I don’t have the courage. It is owned by other people now, and I cannot believe that if I knock on the glass of the front door she will not hurry to me. She always did.
The morning was turning into the afternoon, and the sun was crawling higher into the sky. I did have a meeting later on, so I turned and slowly went away. But even on this continent, thousands of miles away from my home, I can not see a small wooden house and remain calm.
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