Moving Day

A box of knickknacks and photo albums, heavy with memories, tried to hide itself in the corner of our living room. But Dad found it and hauled it out to the car. The room was empty now, except for the ghosts of our past. I walked into the kitchen (it was empty too) and thought about all the family dinners we ate there. The room use to smell like kielbasi and cabbage. Now the only smell was the dust that was raised in the move. My eyes filled with tears as I realized that some other family would eat their meals there from now on.

More than thirty years had passed since Mom and Dad adopted the house on Third Street and made it our home. Back then, when Mom and Dad were newlyweds and Theresa was barely a year old, Mom and Dad didn’t have a lot of money. It was all they could do to pay the rent and put food on the table. Mom and Dad were living in a small apartment on Coal Street. One day, Dad learned about a house for sale in Schoentown - only a short walk from Nana’s house where Dad was raised. He brought Mom to see it.

A red brick house with white and red awnings sat on the corner of Third and Brown. To its left, a red maple proudly splayed its leaves, offering its shade to the petite dwelling. It had a back yard with snowball-filled rhododendrons and a flowering magnolia tree, perfect for climbing. A neatly trimmed row of red hedge outlined the front yard. And a gated trellis entwined with pink roses welcomed visitors to the front door. It was Mom’s dream house.

Mom’s excitement quickly waned as she realized that they could never afford such a splendid place. But Mrs. Grabowski, the owner, was very particular, and she liked Mom and Dad from the start. Mrs. Grabowski was comforted to think about how a young family would enjoy the home she was leaving. She decided that Mom and Dad must have her house.

When Dad explained that they could never afford the payments on a $15,000 mortgage, Mrs. Grabowski immediately dropped her price to $12,000. Dad thanked her but said the most they could afford was $11,000. She dropped her price again. Dad told her they would think about it. A few days later, Mrs. Grabowski called Dad. Dad explained that they would like the house but that they could only manage $500 of the $1000 down payment required by the bank. Mrs. Grabowski offered to make a loan to Mom and Dad for the rest. Mom would have her dream house.

I was born shortly before our family moved into our house. Mom and Dad had left their apartment to stay at Nana’s until the house was ready. Nana’s house was attached to a one room country store where she sold bread, milk and penny candy to the neighbors. She never missed an opportunity to spoil her grandchildren with tootsie rolls and candy fish. A year or so after we moved into our house, Mom told Theresa and me that she had a baby in her belly. Sometimes I would talk to the baby by pressing my face against Mom’s stomach and whispering to it. Then I would tell Mom that the baby wanted to visit Nana and get some penny candy. So off we would go to visit Nana. Tina was born in 1968 and our family was complete.

Theresa, Tina and I were tough little girls. We played sports, like kickball and basketball, with the boys. Girls weren’t allowed on Little League. But we still played baseball after school. Just for fun. In the winter we built snow forts. In the spring, we constructed wooden forts in the woods and soapbox cars that we raced in the alley across the street.

In the summer we wandered into the fields to pick strawberries and raspberries. And we liked to play in the dirt. Sometimes we pretended to be pirates digging for buried treasure with garden tools taken from the garage. Often, we spent the whole day outside, roaming the neighborhood in bare feet. By the end of the summer our toes and heals were black as coal.

The best times I remember involved playing in our yard in the summer. There use to be a line of lilac trees stretching across the back. Bending their branches so they could touch the earth, the lilac trees formed a miniature canopy of green leaves. In the summer, we crawled among the limbs and played in the cool shade. It was safe and I felt comforted by the gentle flutter of the leaves in the summer breeze. The birds seemed to agree. While we played house in our shelter, brown sparrows would perch on higher branches and sing a soft tune.

In the winter, when the trees were bare, they looked like skinny old men standing in a twisted row. But in the spring they were young again when their delicate pink and purple flowers burst into bloom making our whole yard smell like perfume. Theresa, Tina and I picked bunches of flowers off the low branches. We gathered them together and skipped into our house to present them to Mom with toothy grins. Mom fussed about how beautiful they were and displayed them in a milky white vase on the kitchen table. If the lilacs weren’t in bloom, we picked wildflowers - buttercups and daisies. Mom put them in her vase as well.

As the moving van pulled away, I stopped and took one last look at our little home. It would stay there and we would leave, but the memories would come with me. Its been more than eleven years since I last set foot in the house on Third Street. By the smells, the sounds and the feelings are still fresh in my mind. And in my heart, the little brick house at the corner of Third and Brown will always be “Home Sweet Home.”