Pheasant Lane

There is a place in the world that’s always warm. 70 degrees, to be exact. The lighting is soft and the glow from the sun setting over the trees shines through the shades on the sliding glass doors. In this place, an elderly couple sits, she in a loveseat, him in a recliner, and when the metal screen door swings open and the gold doorknob turns, they look up and smile. “Hello dear.”

In the small house on Pheasant Lane, on top of the hill overlooking a forest of tall pines, Granny and Pops made their home. Their second home, to be precise, one where life could move slower and family was only a ten-minute drive away. In the middle of a retirement community, this home was made up of friends who played cards for quarters on Sunday evenings and went to dinner and a movie on Friday nights. A home where sons and daughters made dinners and grandchildren were grown but still sprawled across the carpeted floor on holidays.

This is the place where the wallpaper complements the drapes and the towels in the bathroom match the art on the wall. Where the spare bedroom has a sewing machine for Granny to hem her granddaughters’ dresses. Where the den is lined with model airplanes, boats, and trains, glued together by Pops, while he sits under a large print of the family tree. A tree tracing roots and branches across oceans and onto shores of Ireland and Norway, whose original copy lies in the Smithsonian to this day.

Here is the place where gold ornaments sparkle on an artificial tabletop tree at Christmas. Where a green glass pickle buried deep among the gold waits to be found on New Year’s Day, as a family sings Happy Birthday to a grandfather born on New Year’s Eve.

The house where my grandparents lived is not the house where my father grew up. That house had a waterslide and a pool with a wooden deck that left splinters in our toes every summer. A lamp hung over the kitchen table where we played Chutes and Ladders at sleepovers and ate lunches of hot dogs, Lay’s potato chips, and Welch’s fruit punch, with fudgsicle pops for dessert. That house was down the road from a deluxe movie theatre and had two twin beds to sleep in when the movie was done.

In the home on Pheasant Lane, there was no pool or waterslide. The deck was stained and did not splinter. There were lunches of hot dogs and chips, always with a lamp overhead and a placemat laid below. The cabinets were never without cookies, the fridge never without mini-cans of Coke. In the home where my grandparents lived, the living room where we gathered was one of safety and simplicity. A shelter from the harsher realities. Daytime game shows played on the television and when the woman from San Diego had won her new car, the channel switched to Turner Classic Movies. Stories of the way things used to be were whispered while Hollywood royalty the likes of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn graced the screen. This was a place of comfort, where it was impossible not to fall asleep on the couch, or drift off to the sound of a clock chiming on the hour while Granny sipped her tea.

When I think of my grandparents I see heads of soft white hair and eyes of crystal blue. I see white Keds and black sneakers. I see pastel turtlenecks under crew neck sweatshirts and V-neck t-shirts under plaid shirts. I hear R’s replaced with ah’s in “dahlin’” and “bah-humbugs” mimicking Ebenezer Scrooge when the weather turned cool. I taste oatmeal cookies with vanilla icing and grilled cheese sandwiches squished by a spatula in the pan. I smell thick, sweet perfumes and seasonal Yankee Candles melting on side tables.

The elderly couple that sat in the loveseat and reclining chair are gone. Their home is still, a capsule of a happier time, when whistled tunes echoed down hallways and cackles of laughter burst from kitchens. The only smiling faces are those frozen in frames. As they left, one at a time, ten years apart, she before him, the chapter of the little house on Pheasant Lane came to a close. The gold Christmas ornaments hang in the homes of grandchildren scattered across the country. The cabinets are empty and the lamp above the table has dimmed, but in the space where they once lived are memories, sitting in their seats, waiting for the screen door to swing open and the gold doorknob to turn. Waiting to say, “Hello dear.”