Last year we built our forever home overlooking the seven-acre field that has been in my family since before I was born. To the world, it’s nothing special, just a wide-open patch of Johnson grass, wildflowers, and spiny wads of thistle. Privet hedge borders one end and twisted creosote posts line the other.
My Mom and Dad live across the road. On Sundays, my brother, sister and I fill their house with grandkids. After Dad finishes a long nap on the couch, he likes to walk out on his porch, with a Little Debbie cake in hand, and start talking about all the things we could do with the field to make some money. Like paving a lot for outdoor camper storage or building a row of tract homes. His spitballing is usually enough to drum up an argument, which is usually all he wants. But after no one bites, he moves on to other ideas. Like putting up a long steel building to store the boat and tractor we’ve never bought.
He stops when a pack of deer appears from the tree line. Everyone goes quiet and still. Whoever is closest to the door slips inside to get everyone sitting at the kitchen table to the windows. Together we watch until the deer have crossed the road and disappeared once again.
The field was once a part of thirty acres owned by my Great Granddad. Before he died, he broke it into three chunks and passed it down to his three children; My Great Uncles got the two pieces on the ends and my Grandmother got what was in the middle. After a failed first marriage, she wandered down to Tampa (no one knows why she chose Tampa) where she met my Paw Paw working in a cigar factory. He’s a first-generation Italian-American, and, to hear him tell it, he was doing pretty good for himself in Tampa. But after my Mamma was born, my Grandmother gave him an ultimatum. Either we live in Alabama or you can live without us.
He’s 91 years old now, and he is all that is left of his generation. The back of his house faces mine. He spends most of his day at his back window, watching the deer, the rabbits, the birds, and us. He keeps a set of binoculars on his windowsill for the moments when he gets extra curious. As I write this, I can see him, shirtless in his wheelchair, his hands cupped to his eyes, watching to see what I do next.
When I was a kid, Paw Paw used a push mower to cut the field. He’d start early in the morning, push it for a few hours, then leave the mower wherever he stopped to mark his progress. The rest of the day he’d sit at his kitchen table sipping Diet Pepsi from a Styrofoam cup. He’d leave his front door hanging wide open for flies and wandering kids who needed their bicycle chain put back on. The next morning, he’d pick up where he left off. It would take him nearly a week to finish and by then the weeds were already rising up where he’d started.
Occasionally we’d see an expensive pickup truck parked out in front of his house. Another willing buyer, stopping in to see if he wanted to exchange the field for cash. We never saw the same truck twice. The last I heard, Paw Paw wouldn’t take less than a million.
My Grandmother grew up here. So did my mom. So did I. But it was my wife Katie, a transplant from California, who made the final decision to build this house after she had flown home for the funeral of a woman who would have fit in nicely in the south, her Grandmother, Lanell.
Before we were married, Katie and I spent a year together in California. Often on Sundays we would go visit her Grandma Lanell. After a turkey sandwich lunch, I’d keep Lanell company while she sat out back and smoked cigarettes. Sitting back there with her, smelling the smoke curling up from her fingertips, I could stare out at a large field of freshly turned dirt that belonged to a neighboring farm. Maybe it was the view, or maybe it was just the effect Lanell had on people. But every time I sat back there with her, it felt like I was home.
I imagine Katie was standing in that exact spot thinking about all of her own memories she would be leaving behind in that open space. Maybe she wanted to give them a new home when she called me and said, “I’m ready, let’s build the house out in the field.”
It’s a losing battle to try and take a stand against time. In the evenings, when I sit on my porch and look out into the empty space to silently visit with all the folks that got us here, I worry about the day when all of this will be gone. I wonder who will be around to see it; and if the new people, whoever they are, will love it as we have. Then, the deer come walking out of the tree line and my mind goes quiet and still.
