WOODSTOCK, New York
United States
Just read your bookWriting Assignment: Haunting
May 2009
My grandmother's house is for sale, for three point three million dollars. It hasn't been ours for years. She bought it in the forties for eleven thousand. It used to be an inn, but that was before my grandmother's time. There are eight bedrooms. Nobody has made an offer. The only heat is from an enormous grate on the floor in the dining room. We used to love to stand there on cold mornings, our nightgowns billowing up.
I think of it as my grandmother's because it's that kind of house, the kind you claim, or perhaps claims you. It's the second on the left, the one with the wide gray porch. I still have dreams where I'm sweeping leaves off that porch. At that end of the road is the Atlantic Ocean. My family moved many times, but every summer we went back to that house, where nothing changed.
The kind-hearted realtor let me walk through, because if it doesn't sell soon, the present owner is going to tear it down. Nothing personal: it's a question of money. The land may be more valuable without the house. It doesn't matter how old the structure is (one hundred ninety-six), or how wide the floorboards, or how delicate the tracery on all the hinges on all the doors. It no longer matters which room my grandmother died in, or that she kept red geraniums on the kitchen windowsills. Nothing matters anymore, not the transoms, nor the peeling wallpaper in the tiny rooms in three corners of the attic, not the banister, not the cold back bedroom that said, as soon as you were settled, get up get up get up, and you did. The darkness of the steep back stairs, what happens to that? It doesn't matter. If the house doesn't sell by next month, the whole thing comes down. I walked through every room, the bones of the house were the same. All the doorways in the right places.
My eldest daughter came with me, bringing her camera. It was afternoon, there was a square of light on the floor in the library, a few scraps of furniture here and there. My daughter took a picture in one of the empty rooms. I am headed toward a door, my face is turned toward the camera. I am expressionless, my body a blur. There is a strange fog by the window.
Neither one of us remembers her taking it.
Writing Assignment:
What place would you come back to as a ghost? Why?
I love your memory of driving across a bridge that was "practically sitting on the water." how lucky you are to have happy memories of childhood, and so many places you might return to. thanks for this!
Haunting
Is there any one place I would want to revisit in my after-life, I think not, instead, I think there are many places. Places that my family visited or drove through on trips across the country, places that I was to young to remember, completely.
I remember little things, like, driving across a really long bridge/road that was practically sitting on the water. This is a difficult one as no-one can seem to remember exactly, where it was. My mother, believes, it was a memory from when I was a baby, around one and a half when, they took a trip to Oregon. I have seen pictures of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and it looks a lot like the memory I have, so, who knows, maybe, they went through there on their way to Oregon. I believe, when I die, I will be able to remember everything from my time alive, whether I want to or not. I do have memories of trips to Oregon to see relatives, going to the Botanical Garden (now called the Oregon Garden), in Silverton, Oregon.
There were, the narrow cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Indians in Flagstaff, the beautiful red clay dwellings of the Sedona Valley, and around the Lake Powell area in Arizona, that I recall bits and pieces of. I recall, the windy city of San Francisco, California, the boat trip across to Catalina and the tour of Alcatraz Island and the prison there.
The trip to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and up Pikes Peak in Colorado were unforgettable, as well as seeing Old Faithful blow, in Yellowstone National Park in California, are all distant and slightly blury, but special memories. Memories of our family vacations.
These, and many other vacation sites would be where I would want to return. I would return to relive my happiest of memories, both, as a child and an adult.
Deb Dobs
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