The past is a messy construction site. Some parts seem to have been there forever. Unchanged, seemingly unchangeable.
Other parts have a big “works in progress” sign guarding the entrance. What is happening in there and how fast works are progressing remains unclear.
Some parts remain in the dark and we only get a glimpse of their presence at certain moments. Usually when it hurts.
A childhood place
Recently I went back to grandma’s place in the countryside. I spent several years there as a kid.
The old house. The summer kitchen. The barn. The shed. The giant old pear tree guarding the entrance to the garden. The cherry tree that I climbed so many times to get to the sweetest cherries, those on top, most exposed to the sun. The attic with its hidden treasures.
Grandma left the house a long time ago. She needed to be hospitalized after an AVC that left her severely disabled. Although she recovered some cognitive and physical function, she spent the rest of her life in bed, away from home, needing constant care.
She never stopped talking about her house, her garden, and her animals, which she never got to see again. She became more and more confused and disconnected from reality. Often she was talking as if she had just left her house and village for a couple of days. She was complaining about the neighbors’ shenanigans and worrying about who would feed her cows and pigs.
Time and change
Without her, the old house started a long transformation process. At first, the crumbling wooden fence was replaced by a new one. Then a taller metallic fence replaced the wooden one. Long after grandma’s death, the old house was almost fully renovated to make space for a small kitchen and a bathroom. The buildings surrounding the main house (summer kitchen, stable, toolshed, different storing spaces) were brought down. The old, unproductive trees in the garden were cut down.
This was only part of the transformation. The other one was less visible and a lot slower, but no less important. The carrion continued to dig their little tunnels in the wood of the house. The rains followed one another and insinuated themselves between the beams, between the cracks in the walls, down into the cellar and deeper still, at the foundation of the house.
The house slowly began to lean to one side. It reminded me of my grandpa, leaning on one of the crutches while raising the bottle to his mouth.
And then there was the smell. Houses have their specific smells, like people. Grandma’s house smelled of old age and of countless summers, rains and storms that passed over it, of dung and roses, of dust accumulated for decades in the attic, of rotten wood, plaster, and river stone.
The smell of a dwelling will subsist even through touch-ups and renovations, like an indelible imprint.
What remains
This is what was left of her house and her world after successive waves of transformation. That old, mineral-musky smell of a building that has been through so many seasons, rain, pain, loneliness, wind, and snow.
And the attic, with a pile of old books and notebooks thrown on top of each other. Up there, the dust seems to never settle. The smell of decayed wood is the strongest, the loudest on top of all the other ancient smells coming from downstairs, from the walls and ever further down, from the foundation.
And the garden. That magical space in which, as a child, I invented stories of bravery, honor and sacrifice, in which I was inevitably the hero. The one who fights on the side of justice and gives his life for a noble cause. I was playing all alone and, after each heroic death for justice, I would get up and start a new fight.
During my recent visit, I slept in a small villa built close to the old house, facing the garden. I woke up early, before sunrise. I opened the large window door and I went out. The garden was alive as I have never seen it during the day. Birds were singing from all directions. Loud and clear, as if this was the moment. As if there was not enough time left and all the singing needed to be compressed in this one point in time. A light breeze descended from the hills.
The lost kid
I don’t know if it was nostalgia that drove me to climb up in the attic and roam the garden alone. What I know is that, for a while, I felt so connected to that kid playing out his own heroic stories with wooden swords and spears. And when I climbed up in that cherry tree it wasn’t because the sweetest cherries were on top. This time, the cherry trees were heavy with fruit, with loaded branches leaning all the way to the ground. I climbed up there for that kid.
I guess he’s stuck somewhere, still playing his games. Dying heroically only to get up and start a new battle, waiting for a parent to come and take him back.
Lovely text. My grandmother has also become disconnected with reality and has been in assisted living since 2019. She is now 100. I recall with fondness the times my cousins and I gathered in her house for weekends and vacation. Those were memorable times. The house has since been demolished and in it’s place there is an apartment building.
Thank you Alessandra. It was the same in my case – we were gathering for weekends and different holidays. She would always cry when we were leaving late afternoon. The house and garden are still there but we’re not gathering anymore, just visiting from time to time on our own.