I know my grandparent's house. I wake up late, to no one around. As I move into the kitchen, I can hear the pulse and click of bare feet on linoleum. As they press against it and release. How many feet have sounded here, before I imagine. Where many feet learned to step.
Into the kitchen, I press against the cabinet door, for the catch to release. It springs open. Everything in order. Everything where it has been, since I have known where things have been.
The kitchen, in unwavering consistency. The arrangements on the cabinets. The cutting board. And when Pepi was alive, even that his breakfast and vitamins. His unboiled egg and pre-toasted toast. In position, in formation. And ready for the morning.
And so I can barge and amble through this space. Bound from where the coffee is kept and over to the silverware drawer.
The consistency and spartan simplicity. The space, and the quiet.
It takes me aback. Gives me pause.
Have I ever been, this quiet? In my space. In my surroundings.
And surely, I have, when they're found around me.
So to delve deeper.
Have I ever been intentional?
About space. About emptiness.
About necessity.
Or am I just cluttered and burdened and lost.
Back in the kitchen, working man coffee, in an educated home. Mimi could make money, going grocery shopping. A fighter if ever there was one. This woman waters her lawn in the middle of the night during a drought. Reluctant to miss church on Sunday. She doesn't necessarily like things the way they were, she wants things the way they should be.
Married at 17, mother to five, and grandmother or great to countless more. Here, at 27, I still receive a Christmas card and a birthday card, both with twenty dollar bills. How she manages this, with more than 25 descendants, having never worked, and now a widow. Well, it's beyond me.
So much of Mimi's story is beyond me. A child of the depression.
Back across the quiet tiles, a house that my grandfather built. I step outside.
Abilene this morning is cool and clear with a constant breeze. The smells of summer are alive and confused, being this cold in the heart of July. But none the less, sit outside in Texas for more than a minute. Put away your distractions, and your superficial anecdotes. Try and just, be.
And Texas will talk to you.
Out in this yard, where he grew peaches and apples, pecans. Where clothes hang on fishing line between live oaks, and the air smells like red dirt and mesquite.
Like wide green blades of grass, just cut.
And sun.
