The crab apple trees that line the lane to my parents’ home are in bloom, their bright fuchsia flowers crowding the branches. We have driven 1,000 miles to get here, with two kids and a dog in tow. For seventeen car-imprisoned hours, Lucy has cried and slept, Brooklyn has endured Lucy’s crying and not slept at all, and Luna (the dog) has been panting and shaking. My husband Brian and I have talked about what we should do with our lives during chapter breaks of our audiobook.
We come to Fruitland once every summer and winter, but it’s been four years since I’ve been here in spring, and it may be Idaho’s best season. It’s sunny and 73 degrees. The lilacs are blooming and fragrant. The grass, freshly mowed, glows green in the bright sunlight.
The face of the house has vinyl paneling and white-washed brick, with big wooden beams along the front porch. Inside, it is open and eclectic and homey. A hanging pot organizer has been repurposed to hold dozens of dried bouquets—remnants of valentines from Dad and prom dates of his five daughters. A brick hearth extends to the top of the vaulted ceiling, and two portraits of chickens hang nearby. Nearly every wall in this house is a window, and from the one in the dining room I can see where the grass ends and the wilderness begins, leading all the way to the river I floated every summer of my childhood.
It’s been two weeks since we found out we aren’t moving to Washington, D.C. for Brian’s two-year stint at the national office of his accounting firm. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, he will now work remotely for (at least) two years. We have talked through so many options—stay in Arizona, move to Hawaii, become traveling nomads—our logic running around in circles until I think that if I hear the word “permutation” again I might vomit. Of course, from the moment Brian told me D.C. was cancelled, I thought of going to Idaho—my home, where my parents and my sisters live.
We are unloading two weeks of supplies from our car when my parents return from their errands. There are hugs and exclamations of “You’re here!” all around. Mom is beautiful, older than she looks and full of energy. Dad is growing out his speckled gray scruff. He is becoming melty as he gets older, a sucker for the baby snuggles and toddler speech impediments of his grandchildren.
“Brooklyn, come see the ducks!” Mom insists right away.
She leads us down the grassy hill to the back of the house where a two-tier pond is now home to three adolescent ducklings, still more fuzz than feather. They belong to my youngest sister, Betsie, now eighteen, who has had an obsession with ducks since she was five years old.
“You kind of take this place for granted,” Dad says as we soak in the springtime sun. He pats the tree like a favorite horse. “But not too often. We love it here.”
Around the corner, Mom finds a quail that is stuck in a crevice of the brick stairway. She calls for Brooklyn to come see it. Dad, the doctor, picks up the bird to examine it. He holds it in his palm and checks for injuries on its legs and wings.
“Maybe it’s just sick,” he determines.
Sick. Homesick. Sick of not being home. For the first few days after having the D.C. rug pulled out from under us, working through the options with Brian was a combination of tug-of-war and a carousel—the possibility of moving home placed in my hands, pushed back, handed out to me again. It’s been ten years since I moved away, and with the chance to go back so real and so close, all these feelings—missing, longing, aching—came knocking at the door with a strength that caught me off guard. I let them in, let them out, let them be in the light, let them sit in my lap as I sat in Brian’s. I cried until my eyes were puffy.
“You have sacrificed so much for our family,” Brian said as he held me. “If this is what you want, we will make it happen.”
And so, as the temperature in Arizona tickled 100 degrees, we had packed up and left, hoping seventeen days would be enough time to find a place to live in Idaho.
With the injured bird situated safely in the garage, Brooklyn goes out to the barnyard with Mom, wearing the Belle princess dress from the dress-up box. They coax Cisco out of the pasture and bring him into the barnyard for his grooming session. Cisco is the miniature horse who was Mom’s 45th birthday present from Dad. He is about the size of a Great Dane, and with the same demeanor. Barnyard Belle brushes Cisco’s side and rear, and clumps of his winter coat begin to pile on the ground.
We are back at the house, and Dad (Pompa) plays dolls with Brooklyn while Mom (Grammy) works her charms on Lucy. For the first time in her life, Lucy has pushed my hand away when I reach for her, and she snuggles into Grammy’s chest. This is an irreversible process, one that each grandchild has undergone.
In the evening, my older sister, Juanee, and her husband, Ryan, come over with their four kids. Brooklyn’s oldest cousin, Sunny, almost always greets Brooklyn with a gift of trinkets from around her house, tucked in a tissue-filled gift bag. This time it’s juice boxes, homemade chocolates, and an old t-shirt from her dance class. The opening was more exciting than the gift itself, so the trinkets are set aside and the cousins run off to don costumes and enter the imaginary world.
After dinner we have a bonfire at the barn, where Dad has piled spring tree trimmings to be burned. We don’t need a permit, and the cops don’t show up. They did come once a long time ago, when the flames reached 30 feet high, as high as the barn. I think it was the only time Dad was worried it might get out of control.
In the small pasture, the kids are making a salad of grain and hay for the goats, while Sunny chases them with a lasso. They are fast though and can’t be caught.
Upstairs in the barn there is a ping pong table, old theater seats, and a pull down screen and projector for movies. Dad dreams of turning the barn into a bunkhouse for the twenty plus grandkids they anticipate (they’re at seven now), and points out the spots along the wall where he figures you could stack bunks three high.
Rain has started to sprinkle, so we watch the sunset from inside the barn. As the rain subsides, we toast marshmallows and stare into the fire as we talk. Geese are honking in the distance.
When the sun wakes up tomorrow, this place will still be here with its enchantment and its hold on me. This place, this museum of memories—is it, like the house, full of windows, the beauty behind them to be seen but not touched? Or can I bottle it up and release it again, catch it, hold it, paint it on my own walls?
I think I’d like to try.
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