we are old (near the mountain)

We were talking in the kitchen a few weeks ago when my son said something that sort of surprised me. He said our place is a bit of a museum and that whenever he and his kids visit a small-town museum, they always see things that we have in our house. Oil lamps. A galvanized tub. Typewriters. (Imagine typewriters being museum-worthy!) Anyway, it was something to smile about. To wonder about. To tuck away as yet another indication of time passing.

And then the other night, my other son asked if I would read his boys their bedtime story. Sure, I said. I was already in my bed, reading, and the boys came up in their pyjamas with the book they wanted. It was When I Was Young in the Mountains, by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Diane Goode. I’ve written about that book before. It’s a lovely example of a writer looking back, not in a self-serving way, but in an intimate and moving tribute to the origins of her calling. Each moment is remembered with exactitude and the grandfather sharpening the child’s pencils so she can write everything down is such a beautiful detail.

So the boys snuggled in and I began to read. Look, one of them said: There’s your coffee pot! And the other one noticed the galvanized tub, just like ours, the one we bought when we were building our house. Their dad had his baths in it when he was a year old. And I remember sitting in it too, heavily pregnant with our second child, cooling off in the evening after a day of hanging drywall with John.

Being around grandchildren is (mostly) a gift. You get to see your own children again and have a second chance. A second opportunity to swim with them, make favourite meals, read the old books. And you can add a chapter to the family story you are always remembering, always telling: this morning, after John regaled them with how he was strapped 11 times in grade 5, I told them how I’d inadvertently made trouble for another child in grade 1 and that I didn’t know at the time how to step forward and admit responsibility. I told them I still feel badly about it, 64 years later.

So we live in a museum near the mountain. Our galvanized tub comes in handy for soaking plants that need special treatment and I still love the coffee pot I found in the Quilchena store at least 30 years ago. (The copper pot it replaced is in the back of a cupboard and is even more worthy of museum status.) The typewriter is out in the print-shop with our 19th century Chandler and Price platen press and the cases of vintage type. This morning I put away the family silver and the platters from the boys’ great-grandmother. On my desk, my wooden pencil box, some fossils, and a spruce cone from my grandmother’s village in Moravia.

When I was young in the mountains, Grandfather came home in the evening covered with the black dust of a coal mine. Only his lips were clean, and he used them to kiss the top of my head.

My own grandfather was a coalminer and maybe he kissed my father’s head, and my father kissed my head, and I kissed my grandson’s head as he left this morning. (His brother was already running to the car.) As the family drove away from the museum that is our life together here on a bluff near two lakes, we waved to them, Goodbye, goodbye.

Note: the quoted passage is from When I Was Young in the Mountains.