Goodbye to Grandfather’s house in MA
Yesterday was the closing on his house in MA.
I visited there pretty much every year I can remember growing up, went for at least one Christmas to visit Grandma and Grandpa without Mom and Dad as a kid, and lived there for about 10 years after college during my, “Oh my God… I have to work for the rest of my life. What now?” phase.
It was good to go back at the end of may and move out most of the rest of my junk (thanks to Mom, Dad and James for getting the very last of it mailed out) and to spend some time with Grandfather. It was also good to see him near the end of my sabbatical but never again will we be in that house that he built while my dad and uncle were just kids.
Some of my fondest family memories are of sitting in the kitchen on summer nights with my grandparents and parents and drinking hot tea (with milk per the style in the Old Country). It was something we did because it was my grandparent’s home and that’s when they would sit and talk before going to bed each night.
Looking back now I can imagine how they would work all day in the opposite of my Web 2.0 world and then take that time to sit and catch up. Funny how talking about my grandfather makes me really miss my grandmother. I wish she could have seen the world as it is now (with the exception of the global political garbage) and to see how her grandsons turned out.
If you ask my brother he’ll tell you I was her favorite but I think the combination of me growing my hair to hippie lengths and those awesome great grandkids would have made James the favorite hands down. 