Columbus
This past weekend we visited my grandparent’s house in Columbus, Georgia, probably for the last time as a family. My grandparents had the house built in 1987 on Lake Oliver, which sits on the Georgia/Alabama border. We used to sit on the deck in rocking chairs in the evening and look at the sun set over Alabama. My grandmother once caught a huge catfish in that lake, and I have a vague recollection of taking a ride on a “pah-tee” boat (aka a pontoon boat) down some of its creeks.
All weekend I kept waiting for my grandfather to saunter into the kitchen and assume his rightful place at the head of the table, where he could look down onto the lake. Instead, Sophie sat there and made deviled eggs with my cousin, Annie.
We swam in the pool, ran on the lawn, drank from the veritable “Macallan Room” (my Grandfather’s bar). We ate dinner around their table and barely had enough room, as the family continues to expand with sons-in-laws and grandbabies. I slept on my grandmother’s side of their bed, which seemed to have shrunk since I was a little girl. My sister said that she was surprised that it felt so normal to be there, without them. It truly did. Not stuffy, not empty, but full of twenty-two years (not to mention a lifetime) of memories. What will feel strange is when we don’t have the house by the lake. When the desk and the tables and the chests of drawers are sent their separate ways, tucked into corners of our own spaces. As long as the house is intact, we can still wait for the them to emerge from their dressing rooms. We can picture them behind the bar, at the stove, on the porch waving goodbye. Asking their images to leave with us will be an altogether different matter.
