Papa and Mutti's House

There are many things I love about my grandparents' house.

I've been to their lovely little home in the countryside of Biarritz, France, more times than I can remember. The biggest difference now is the absence of Mutti, my mom's mother, who passed away last February. The second biggest difference is that the old, always-out--of-tune piano in the back corner of the living room has been replaced by an electronic piano. Other than that, everything seems about the same. Yesterday I was helping Rebekah prepare dinner in the tiny kitchen, and I had to use a paper towel to clean something up. When I was finished, I tossed it in the trash can by the door without thinking twice about it. I didn't need to look for it; it was right there, in its place, like it has been all these years.

My grandparents' house is full of memories; it has been a recurring stage on which I spent parts of my growing-up. I remember being much younger, playing games with my much younger cousins. I remember feeling shy around my family here, because I would only see them every once in a while. I remember climbing the tree in my grandparents' front yard, sometimes with cousins, sometimes by myself. I would climb as high as I could, and sit and look out over the field across the street, watching the world. Among the business of family visits, those moments of solitude stand out in my mind. Right now, I'm sitting on the mustard-yellow couch in my grandparents' living room; David is on his laptop next to me, Jordan and Hannah are playing gameboy games, Papa is reading the paper, Rebekah is dozing across the room. In a way, this house is a home for me; that sense of familiarity and comfort is, I think, an intrinsic part of what makes a home, a home.

This house contains not only memories for me, but tangible, physical memories as well. I wandered upstairs yesterday to look around, and in every room there are faded photographs, papers, yellow newspaper clippings, and other remnants of the past. In one room, a room that I don't think I've ever actually been in before in all the years, there was a homemade paperweight on a desk - a rock that had been decorated by my mom and one of her brothers as a birthday present for my grandfather who knows how long ago. My grandparents started a Christian radio station thirty-three years ago, and it's still broadcast from their house. In one room upstairs, the chief radio hub of the house, there are large monitors, audio equipment, and walls lined with casette tapes.

I know that over time, change is inevitable, and that things morph and fade into other things, but sitting here, in my grandparents' house, it's hard to believe that change can effect, and has already effected, a place as stable and as engrained into my memory and childhood as this house is.