The Girl Before the Tides

I recently found my grandparents’ old house on NE Shaver Street.

There weren’t any interior photos of their house, just a Street View image from outside. But then I discovered something almost as useful: the house next door was nearly identical, and there was a real estate listing with photographs of the inside.

I probably spent much longer looking through those photos than any reasonable person would.

It wasn’t Grandma and Grandpa’s house, but the layout was so familiar.

I could see where everything belonged.

The dining room. The fireplace. The stairs leading to the basement. The sliding glass door leading out to the patio. Even the kitchen was close enough that I could mentally put Grandma’s back together.

The neighboring kitchen had been updated, but I could picture Grandma’s avocado-green counters and flooring. I could put the island back where it belonged, with three stools tucked beneath it and cabinets hanging overhead. I could see her rolltop desk tucked beside the fireplace and Grandpa’s stereo across the room.

And then there was that enormous dining table.

It was where Grandpa stood at the head and led grace before special dinners. It was where Grandma once asked everyone how they liked her green bean casserole, only to discover she’d forgotten to take it out of the oven. It was where I sat between Grandma and Grandpa eating raisin bran muffins covered in butter and honey while the smell of Grandpa’s Folgers filled the house.

The photographs weren’t of their home.

But somehow, I could still see it.

Every room seemed to unlock another memory.

The patio brought back the afternoon my mom and grandma helped remove the stitches from my ankle after a childhood accident. Grandma had been a nurse during World War II, so there was never much question about whether she knew what she was doing.

The basement brought back memories of cousins, a dollhouse, and the ridiculous amount of entertainment we managed to get from an ordinary cardboard box.

But when I thought about the backyard, I remembered something different.

My grandpa planted the roses there.

Grandma’s favorite was a Double Delight, and Grandpa would cut fresh blooms from it and bring them inside for her. He’d put them in a tiny vase on the piano in their living room.

He also planted a pink dogwood outside their bedroom window because it was Grandma’s favorite flowering tree. He chose that spot so she could wake up and see it blooming every spring.

Those are details I knew growing up, but I understand them differently now.

As a child, the roses were just Grandpa’s roses. The dogwood was just the pretty tree outside their window. Fresh flowers in the little vase were simply one of those familiar things that belonged in Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

Now I recognize the intention behind them.

My grandpa had surrounded their home with little expressions of love for my grandma.

And maybe that’s what all this reconstructing has really made me realize.

The house belongs to someone else now. The rooms have changed. The furniture is gone. The enormous dining table where our family gathered isn’t there anymore.

Time moves forward. Families leave, new families arrive, rooms get remodeled, and eventually a home that once felt completely yours becomes someone else’s address.

But not everything disappears just because the house changes hands.

Some things remain in the places themselves.

Others remain with us.

A rose bush.

A tree outside a bedroom window.

A table surrounded by family.

Something planted decades ago by a man who simply wanted to make his wife happy.

Maybe that’s the closest a house ever comes to remembering us.