define: secrets.

The sound of his voice carried throughout the house. Down in the basement, from the bottom of the pine stairs stained a rich honey color, he would yell up to my grandmother and ask her if lunch was ready. In my bedroom, at the end of the hall, I could hear them play their back-and-forth game.

"Is lunch ready yet?"

"No," she would yell back, "but it will be in five minutes." She never stopped what she was doing to walk to the basement door. She would just yell from the kitchen sink or through the back screen door where she picked fresh cherry tomatoes. Each year their multiple gardens took up most of their time from early spring to late fall.

And he would yell back, "What did you say?"

And this would go on for the next five minutes until my grandmother finally told my grandfather to come up and wash up for lunch. My grandfather was hard of hearing, such a silly expression. I often heard my grandmother remark that his hearing was more selective than 'hard' and that my grandfather was able to weasel his way out of many situations by seeming not to hear the questions (or demands) asked of him. I always found it funny because it was like their secret code. My grandmother would ask "can you take the trash out, Pa?" and he would respond with "what?" or "eh?" or some other grunt or noise that my grandmother miraculously understood completely after years of marriage. I would laugh and he would turn to me and wink the moment she turned back to the stove or sink.

*

There was something about his hands, like the buzzing of a good piece of writing, that told the story, his story.

*

As a small child, I had a love-hate relationship with the mornings that I awoke in my grandparent's house. My peach colored room with the double bed (which seemed so enormous to me at the time) is like a vault of stored memories. I just want to go back there, to the mornings. My grandfather would knock on the door to wake me for breakfast. His hands could be gentle; I remember how softly he would knock, saying something about how he would have to eat all of the pancakes when he received no response from me. And I would always wait, cherishing the warmth of the bed, the covers pulled tightly over my head to block out the morning sun. I would wait, thinking that I had waited long enough for him to walk back down the short hall to the kitchen. Yet every morning when I crept from my bed to slowly open the door, he was always standing there, smiling.

*

I could sleep, in that bed, in that house. Just sleep. Lovely, silent sleep.

*

I can remember the way the kitchen smelled of bacon popping and frying on the stove as I padded out in my slippers and pajamas.

How the laundry always seemed as fresh as the day it was hung out on the clotheslines my grandfather built from 2 x 6's and generic, hardware store white rope that frayed soon after it was up. You could smell the air in those clothes, the scent of summer in all its glory. Sometimes like fresh mowed grass, other times it was as though the sun itself had baked right into the fabric eminating a fragrance that can be described only as childhood, captured and contained.

The lines hung just yards away from a pear tree that blossomed every spring, and further beyond that was the large garden my grandparents tended on a daily basis, like a job, a habit, a responsibility.

*

At the end of the house opposite my bedroom, an antique aluminum screen door masks the inner pine door that separates the garage from the house. From the first sixty degree day in spring to the chilliest days late into fall, the inner door was always open, revealing my grandmother through the mesh screen busy in the kitchen. My grandparent's garage was also my grandfather's workshop (although I'm not sure how much work he ever really did out there). Additionally, it served as the spare kitchen at Thanksgiving time when the pies needed to cool and the countertops were already brimming with my grandmother's creations. The garage was frequently deemed the 'patio' for setting up plaid lawn chairs to watch summer thunderstorms roll through without getting wet. On occasion, it was a place for my grandfather to park his truck (and my Hot Wheels). In many ways, it was the heart of the house.

*

I would stand in the garage and admire his tools, looking at them hung on nails on the walls. There was no real pattern to the way he arranged them other than the system of one nail for screwdrivers and files which had a hole in the handle, and two nails for items like hammers that would be situated between correctly spaced nails. It was sort of like an art form.

I was never allowed to touch the tools without my grandfather's presence. It was kind of the "Christmas Story" phenomena. You know, the little boy wants the Red Rider but his father keeps telling him he'll shoot his eye out. My grandfather never said that, but he implied that a similar terrible fate would meet one of my appendages if I touched the tools.

Not to mention all of the tools looked barbaric. He called them antique, 'built in the days when men were men and knew how to build a tool right' kind of tools. They still looked barbaric, and now that's the only word I can think of to describe them. His hammer looked like a stone-age club without a sense of ergonomics or efficiency (although, I suppose, when you're going to pound the hell out of something, it doesn't really matter how it looks).

As a child, my fascination with the tools grew until I couldn't take it any longer. I had a habit of picking up rocks and stones from around the neighborhood and cornfields surrounding my grandparent's house. I would choose mostly smooth stones, and carry as many as I could fit in my pockets. The bottoms of my pockets would be full of white, chalky dust from the street, and chucks of dirt from the cornfield.

[to be continued...]