Stained

I have a pair of old jeans that I adopted as my "work" jeans to be worn when gardening, moving, washing cars, etc. They are too big for me so they hang down low on my waist but they're really comfortable and ratty enough that I don't care if they get stained. These are the jeans I wore most during my weekend in Michigan and now they serve as sort of a living diary of my time there...

I spilled hard lemonade on my jeans when we went on the hayride. And the hay itself left a lingering odor. That was fun... riding through the dark woods, feeling young and carefree again. The boys were shooting off bottle rockets and the girls were commenting on how silly the boys were being. And someone's three-year old daughter helped my cousin drive the tractor and we all told her what a good job she did. I felt invincible. Like nothing bad could happen to me right at that moment.

The red stains on the legs are from when I wiped my hands on them while picking raspberries in my Grandfather's raspberry patch. Growing up we'd pick the fruit for Grandmother to make jam, or to mash up for a topping on ice cream. But that wasn't going to happen anymore. The house was going up for sale immediately and this would be the last time I'd ever pick raspberries in the garden. I wasn't even saving them up for eating later, I just picked them fresh off the vine and popped them into my mouth. And if the juice got on my hands I just wiped my hands on my jeans. I hope the stains don't come out when I wash the jeans because it would be nice to have a keepsake of the last time I ever got to pick raspberries at my Grandparents' house. The last time I got to be a child there.

The grass stains on the knees are from wrestling in the yard with my nephews. They'd run up to me and tackle me, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two at once. They'd tackle each other, too, but they always came back to tackle me. I'd fall back on the grass and let out a moan, as if they'd really knocked me down. When they get older they probably won't remember playing in the yard with "Aunt A" but I will, and if the grass stains don't wash out, my jeans will remember too.

There's dirt and sweat from moving antique furniture out of the basement and onto the trucks. Bit by bit we took apart my Grandparents' home. I went down into the basement where I saw my Grandfather's workbench. I went up into the attic where my mother and aunt used to have a room. I went into the garage and picked through the things in there. I looked around and realized there was no coming back.

If you sniff really closely (like my dog did when I got home) you can probably smell the fried chicken dinner we ate at my Uncle's Sunday night, when we all sat around the big dining room table and told jokes. I felt like I was home... around all my family, as if this was the cocoon that I was safe in.

There are tears, wiped carelessly onto my jeans from when I was crying at my Grandmother's house, realizing this was the last time I was going to be there.

Raindrops from the bad weather on the long ride home.

There are probably a million more smells and smudges that reveal the things I did over the weekend, the emotions I felt. And like the stains that are left behind on my jeans, there is a stain upon my heart for each one. Stains that can never be cleansed.

I said good-bye to one of my "constants" that I've talked about before. No matter where I went, how old I got, or who I "was" in life, one of my constants was my Grandparents' house. My Grandmother and Grandfather sitting in their chairs, the portrait of my cousin above Grandfather, the one of my sister above Grandmother. Or was it the other way around? The raspberry patch. The endless trinkets from all the trips they've made around the world. My Grandmother. My Grandfather. There. In that house.

The stains may wash out of my jeans after all. But the memories will remain in my heart always.

A.R.M.
07/05/01