This old house

There are many spots on the floor in my kitchen where the linoleum is worn through and I can see the wood underneath it and I’m sure when people see it all they see is old, stained linoleum that needs to be replaced. Sometimes all I see is old, stained linoleum that needs to be replaced, too. But sometimes, I see my sister and I laying on the floor wrapped in blankets watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on a tiny black and white television with rabbit ears and tinfoil wrapped around them to make the reception better and a turn dial and a long orange extension cord running through the mud room and out the front door which is plugged into a gas generator humming in the distance but not loud enough to stop us from hearing Santa tell Rudolph that he gets to lead the sled that year because of his red nose. 

My whole family, including eight dogs are in the kitchen because the power and the heat are out and we have one space heater which is plugged into the generator too. The floor is cold but we have pillows and blankets and we are in our pajamas and the word happy is inadequate to describe the emotion I am feeling.   

And then somehow years have gone by and I am pulling up old flooring in the same house in my bedroom, right behind the kitchen. I am sitting on the floor with my niece Lila and she is running her hands over the wood planks that have miraculously (after days of me on my hands and knees pulling, prying, swearing, sanding and oiling) made an appearance under layers of carpet and plywood and all manner of things my parents used to cover up the original floor to make my bedroom more quiet and less old and less cold and less likely to get slivers in my feet. 

The ceiling fan is pink. Lila and I both agree that it too, must go away, along with the carpet.  

I want to ask Lila if she wants to lay on the old cold wood floor with blankets and pillows and dogs and watch cartoons on a black and white tiny television with rabbit ears and poor reception even though it is a month past Christmas and it’s 70 degrees out in January. I know she would say yes because she loves me but I don’t have an old black and white television with rabbit ears so instead she asks if we can listen to “Memories,” I kid you not, by Maroon 5 over and over again on my phone until she gets bored of watching me work and singing along and asks if she can ride the four-wheeler in a circle around the farm yard.

And right before she leaves the room to go ride the four-wheeler that makes my dogs and me crazy, she asks me how my dad, her grandpa, died because she can’t remember. And I can’t remember if my sister has told her yet how he died and I wasn’t sure what to say just like the time my nephew asked me how babies were made and I couldn’t remember if my sister had told him that yet and I didn’t feel ready to explain suicide or sex to the big eyes staring at me and so I tell her his heart stopped beating which is true and she nodded and said, “oh yes, I remember now.” I don’t know what she remembers but I’ll need to remember to ask my sister about it.

I will be ready next time.

We stand up and I grab her hand and remembered just days earlier when we were walking on the side of a highway and I was holding on to her, just as I was now, because the alternator had gone out in the truck and so we walked to some hot springs in a valley that people consider paradise but with all the development lately I wonder if it will be paradise to anyone in 10 years, but regardless, we go to the nearest hot springs and wait for help to arrive because, friends, if you are going to break down, being a mile from a hot springs is a pretty good place to do it.

As we walked through the snow, on the side of the highway, she looked up at me and said, “this happened because you said I had to build character today,” and my love for her spilled out over onto that highway and I didn’t even get mad that none of the cars driving by stopped to ask if we needed help or a ride and I didn’t even wonder what Montana was coming to until later in the day when I started to wonder. 

But today, I’m not wondering about anything, I’m just with my niece in my old farmhouse feeling grateful for all the footsteps that this old, beat up floor has held up for three generations of my family and dogs and cats and a couple baby goats and oh yes, that one goose Cheep-Cheep that my mom had as a pet and mice and spiders and all the creepy crawly things that take refuge in our house when winter sets in because it is, after all, an old farmhouse, built in pieces, room by room, and there are holes and cracks and all manner of ways for life to find a way in.