5 Oak Hill Drive

I wish there was an organization that adopted out grandparents.  I miss mine so much.  I wish I could go to 5 Oak Hill Dr., and just walk around the yard and through the house another time.  I know where every creak is in the floor boards.  I can picture every square inch of that house in my mind.  The closets I hid in playing hide and seek, the fire place and mantle in the living room with the big beautiful Degas over its center which I hung the 12 days of christmas decorations on each December, the shelves in the laundry room lined with my grandmothers pickles and jams, my grandfathers desk with the paperweight containing one of my mother's school photos and the wooden spinning top I spun every time I went into that room.  I can see the painting of their old dog Ike hanging on the basement wall, the cold damp blue bedroom that was mine for a year after my parents divorced with the Japanese dolls up on the closet shelf and the brooding, dark painting of a fishing boat caught in an angry, black, ocean storm, and every single window that I would wash for them in the spring.  I can picture my grandmother's geraniums in the hanging pots and the on the back of the house, the lilly of the valley along the foundation and smell the wood chips my grandfather surrounded the house and the base of every tree with.  I can taste the rhubarb that grew along the fence and the raw pole green beans, carrots and tomatoes we ate as we picked every summer.  I want to touch the giant smoke bush in the back yard, and watch the birds perched in the bright yellow spring forsythia from the living room window.  I want to sweep the acorns from the giant oak tree off the back deck one more time, and watch the squirrels go flying off in the air when they try to raid the anti-squirrel bird feeder.  I want to see my grandmother's eyes light up at the sight of a visiting neighbor and hear the sound of her happy sing-song voice as she greets them warmly, and gives a cheerful laugh here and there as they chat about life and family and happy things.  I want to give them haircuts one last time.  I want to work a jigsaw puzzle with them on the dining room table once more and want to play one more game of scrabble with my grandfather and ask him about his collection of coins.  I want to set the dining room table for one more meal as an entire family, complete with one of my grandmother's beautiful pies for dessert and tea using her cherished collection of tea cups all unique and different from one another.  I want to hand my grandfather the bowl we all know he will want for the pie since he had to eat any berry pie as if it was cereal, in a bowl with milk poured over it.  I want to help my mother and aunts clean up in the kitchen and set their table for breakfast in the morning.  I want to sit on their couch watching The Vicar of Dibley or game shows guessing at prices or letters or words together while my grandfather holds Coco in his lap, and my grandmother tells Sugar to roll over and giggles at her.  I want to spend a night there and wake up to their cheerful morning routine, my grandfather in his house robe and slippers, reading the paper in the living room, and my grandmother in her nightgown brewing coffee and preparing cereal and donuts for breakfast.  Flowers picked from their garden arranged in a bouquet on the kitchen table by one of my aunts, my grandfather might comment on them, then make a strange joke or statement or two showing his quirky, unique sense of humor or at least show it by wiggling his ears while eating his breakfast, then return to his paper while my grandmother clears the table to join him to finish their coffee and read the paper together.  I will never stop missing them, or this place.