On the way home, Jack fell asleep after crying for about 10 minutes. He hates the car. Eliot had been asking me all kinds of unanswerable questions about the way of the world and life and why he has two hands instead of one. I love that he talks (and talks and talks and talks), but eventually it is simply hard to answer all of the questions all the time. About this time, though, he had quieted some and looked out the window reflectively.
That is when I turned left onto Salem Road. There on my left stood my grandmother's old house--a white rectangle missing half of the front fence, grass growing high, and no hints of the all of the cement statues that my grandfather had collected. For the first time, I could not pull in the driveway and walk out back into the seven-acre field. The house and the farmland does not belong to her anymore. It isn't our field anymore.
My grandfather died 13 years ago. My grandmother lives in a great assisted care facility. She has dementia, but is well-looked after. She can't live on her own. It didn't make sense to keep the old, failing house. No one had any use for the land. And if it changed hands, my grandmother couldn't just give it to anyone--she'd have to sell it full-price. No one had the money sitting around to just buy the land simply for sentimental reasons.
The field was where I once played as a child. We'd feed the goats and sheep. We'd walk the fenceline to check for damage. We swung on the tire swing. However, the barns have been torn down, the animals are gone, the land has not been maintained, and it would not be safe to play in without caution. It still breaks my heart a little that my boys won't run through that field like I did.
Last year, I was pregnant with our Jack. Chris, Eliot, and I drove up to Memaw's house. It was empty. We walked in the back and took a few maternity photos. I'll cherish them always since I carried Jack, but also because I stood in the field--my grandparents' field--for the last time.
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