Aunt Sheila lived with Grandma and Grandpa at the old house. She was called deaf and dumb but I knew she wasn’t. She couldn’t hear but she was as smart as any of us. Because I lived with Grandma from time to time I got to go the movies with Sheila. Translating in our
own homemade sign language I would tell her what Elvis was up to, as if she didn’t know just from his moves, his glances and his lovely blond co-stars. She loved Elvis.Mom and Grandma in front of her house. The red brick row houses across the street are now the parking lot for Newport on the Levee
At night Sheila was up late she’d pull the box of Hershey cocoa from the shelf and I would find the sugar. In the wee hours between the movies we would make homemade fudge or
pop corn that we’d cover with melted butter. My daughters on their bikes in Grandma’s yard. Even as a mother I moved back from time to time.
When I graduated from high school I moved back in with my grandparents to help my grandma with my grandpa, who had had a stroke. He was 88 years old and like many in his condition, he wanted to go home. We didn’t know where that home was because they had lived in this house for almost 50 years. One very cold night in late February grandma, my cousin Carlene and I woke to moans. We searched the house for grandpa, even the dark, scary basement. He was no where to be found but his moans continued. He did not have enough strength to open the heavy front door, swollen with age it was usually stuck and everyone just came in the back. The last place was outside, though, and when we forced the heavy door open, we found grandpa on the snowy ground, near the dreaded forsythia bush. He survived just a few more days, still wanting to go home, having gained enough strength to open the door that we barely could handle.
When grandma grew older and the house was her’s alone, it became too big and the steps too high and narrow. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. She lived with my mom for a few years, in an apartment upstairs from Aunt Sheila and her husband and her daughter. It was convenient but it wasn’t home. It wasn’t the home where she could spend time in her yard, watering the grass and raising dandelions. It wasn’t the front porch where she could watch the traffic taking the sharp curve onto Route 8. It wasn’t the homestead where the family came to watch the fireworks or celebrate a holiday.
When I was a young mother living far away, Grandma would come to visit. On quiet nights she would tell me stories of her house. Before the floodwall was built they had a view of the water and only had to cross Front Street to enjoy the riverbank. She told me of carnivals and circuses that would set up just walking distance from her front door. She told me that in the 1937 flood she and the family crawled out of the attic window into a rowboat. They had waited until the water was very high, not wanting to leave what they had behind. Trying to save it by moving it all to the second floor, it still was ruined when the flood came up as far as the roof. When my husband and I stripped wallpaper to panel the second floor, you would see daylight where the boards had disintegrated from the flood waters. The slant of the house made the work difficult and the finished project a bit askew.
Grandma told me that during the depression Grandpa would go to the river boats and buy fish. We would then walk dozens of miles through Ft. Thomas and Highland Heights selling it, just to put food on the table.
Now our homestead has been replaced with six stories of shiny metal and glass. It has a commanding view across the floodwall and where the dusty basement stood, is a clean, concrete parking garage. I drive past whenever possible, remembering the days and lives that we enjoyed at the homestead. No one ever took a photo of the front of grandma’s house but I can see it in my heart.
When grandma grew older and the house was her’s alone, it became too big and the steps too high and narrow. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. She lived with my mom for a few years, in an apartment upstairs from Aunt Sheila and her husband and her daughter. It was convenient but it wasn’t home. It wasn’t the home where she could spend time in her yard, watering the grass and raising dandelions. It wasn’t the front porch where she could watch the traffic taking the sharp curve onto Route 8. It wasn’t the homestead where the family came to watch the fireworks or celebrate a holiday.
When I was a young mother living far away, Grandma would come to visit. On quiet nights she would tell me stories of her house. Before the floodwall was built they had a view of the water and only had to cross Front Street to enjoy the riverbank. She told me of carnivals and circuses that would set up just walking distance from her front door. She told me that in the 1937 flood she and the family crawled out of the attic window into a rowboat. They had waited until the water was very high, not wanting to leave what they had behind. Trying to save it by moving it all to the second floor, it still was ruined when the flood came up as far as the roof. When my husband and I stripped wallpaper to panel the second floor, you would see daylight where the boards had disintegrated from the flood waters. The slant of the house made the work difficult and the finished project a bit askew.
Grandma told me that during the depression Grandpa would go to the river boats and buy fish. We would then walk dozens of miles through Ft. Thomas and Highland Heights selling it, just to put food on the table.
Now our homestead has been replaced with six stories of shiny metal and glass. It has a commanding view across the floodwall and where the dusty basement stood, is a clean, concrete parking garage. I drive past whenever possible, remembering the days and lives that we enjoyed at the homestead. No one ever took a photo of the front of grandma’s house but I can see it in my heart.
My cousin Barb, my daughers and my grandmother under the shade tree in the back yard.
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