Home Again
After a difficult year living away from home, I finally returned to my grandmother’s house, the one place that ever felt steady beneath my feet. For a short time, I let myself believe the ground would stay firm.
As soon as school let out, I went back home to live with Grandma. I’d have the whole summer to catch up with friends before returning to Clarence Junior High and starting eighth grade. Nancy was even coming for a visit, her first since she moved away.
It felt like my life, which had been on pause for a year, was finally snapping back into place. After all the loneliness and confusion and trying so hard to fit into a place that never felt like mine, I was going home.
On the drive back to Clarence that summer of 1970, I tried not to show too much excitement as Aunt Mae steered the car toward Kraus Road. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings about wanting to go back home to Grandma, to a quieter life. To my own room.
I love Aunt Mae. She is my godmother and always talks about how much she loved my mom when she was alive, that they were best friends even though they were ten years apart in age.
When we pulled into the driveway, I saw Uncle Arnie. Two godparents at once! He lives across the street from our farm in Corfu. I wondered what he was doing there. Being with my favorite aunt and uncle, and coming home to Grandma, made me forget that I ever missed home.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, wrapping me in one of his full-body hugs and leading me through the kitchen and down the garage steps.
A scrabble of paws. A sharp, bright “Yip! Yip!” Then a white, curly-furred puppy scrambled up my shins, trying his best to climb all the way into my arms.
“Oh!” I cried, scooping him up. His little body shook with excitement, and when I looked back at Uncle Arnie, his smile was so wide it buried the mole on his cheek in a deep dimple.
“For me?” I asked.
“It’s your welcome-home gift.”
I had one arm around the puppy and one around my godfather as I bolted into the kitchen. Grandma was pouring coffee.
“Mom! Look what Uncle Arnie got for me! Can I keep him?”
She turned, her smile just as wide as his. “I helped pick him out.”
I named my poodle-mix Peanut. We were inseparable. If I wasn’t in school, he was glued to my side.
We played for hours in the yard and the woods. Hide-and-go-seek was fun, but my favorite game was stuffing Peanut gently into our mailbox and closing the little door. He’d wait patiently, trustingly, until I knocked and asked, “Can Peanut come out to play?” Then out he popped, pushing the door with his paw and leaping into my arms.
With Nancy far away, Peanut became my constant companion. Someone was happy every single time they saw me. It was a wonderful summer.
That fall I returned to Clarence Junior High, a few miles down the road, and slipped easily back into my old circle of friends. I also met a new girl, a freckle-faced redhead named Shelly Naples (because her real name is the same as my best friend Nancy, I have given her a different name - Shelly - so as not to confuse the reader), who sat next to me in chorus. We started calling each other by nicknames: she called me Streisand Nose, and I called her Napes. Because of Shelly, I could laugh at my big nose—the one the kids at Catholic school made fun of.
In chorus class, though, I felt like the teacher had a personal mission to make me sing better. He hovered over me during warmups, placing one hand on my back and the other on my stomach. “Breathe from your diaphragm,” he said, pushing his hand into my belly while I tried (and failed) to hit the right notes.
I told myself I was never going to be a good singer. Why did he bother? I knew my voice sounded stupid. For Christmas I’d gotten a tape recorder, and the first time I heard my voice on it, I shut it off and vowed never to record myself again. Instead, I used the cassette recorder to tape my favorite shows: The Wizard of Oz and Born Free, two movies that only came on television once a year. I listened to them on my recorder over and over until I could repeat every word verbatim. Born Free, the movie about lion cubs raised by Joy Adamson in Africa, made me determined to someday work with wild animals.
Anyhow, I wished the chorus teacher would stop picking on me. My voice was no good, and I was only taking the class to be with Shelly.
My speaking voice had always been husky, or so everyone told me. As a kid I was constantly battling sore throats and bronchial issues. Last winter Grandma took me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. After the exam, she left me in the waiting room while she spoke to the doctor alone.
When we got in the car, she shook her head, wearing a half-grin that didn’t match her tight jaw.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong with me?”
She looked over, shrugged, and said, “All that money for the doctor to tell me what I already knew. You just talk too much.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or be mortified. She laughed first. That helped.
I was happy at home again with Grandma, with my brother Jimmy, and with Peanut, who slept with me every night. His snores were nothing compared to Grandma’s. Hers shook the house, and sometimes even her teeth fell out while she slept.
During spring break of 1971, Grandma and Uncle Arnie drove Jimmy, my cousins, and me on a trip to Florida. I heard whispers that Grandma would be looking for a house to buy. That night, lying on my bed with Peanut curled against me, I whispered, “I think we’re going to move again.”
I felt two ways about the possibility of moving to Florida. Another move meant losing my friends, starting over, learning new faces. But then I imagined Peanut answering me in a wisecracking voice: “But Florida has beaches! Florida is warm! No snow!”
I pushed the fear aside. The next morning, we left before sunrise for the thousand-mile drive south.
This wasn’t my first trip to Florida. Grandma took Jimmy and me down there during spring break to visit her sister, Aunt Josie. Sometimes we went with Aunt Irene and my favorite cousin Wende and her brother. This time it was Uncle Arnie and his sons, so I was stuck with all boys to play with.
Packed into the back seat with my brother and cousins jostling for space, I tucked myself into the door, drifting in and out of daydreams as the wheels hummed over the road. When I closed my eyes, I could slip into another world where nothing and no one could touch me.
We reached Starke late and piled into two motel rooms. After Grandma fell asleep, I crept outside. The Florida night wrapped around me like warm silk, the orange-blossom scent, the glow of pink neon reflecting off the stucco walls, the palm trees swaying like sleepy dancers. I wandered the parking lot, keeping our hotel room in sight, breathing it all in.
The next day we stopped at a souvenir shop. With babysitting money, I bought a necklace with a tiny palm tree and a birthday card for Elizabeth Montgomery, my absolute idol. She plays Samantha on my favorite television show, Bewitched. Her birthday is April 15, and I was determined to send it in time.
Months earlier I’d written her a fan letter, and she’d mailed me two autographed photos, signed To Lisa, Best Wishes, Elizabeth. They hung on my bedroom wall. When I looked at her photograph, I imagined what it would be like to have her as my real mom. Maybe one day I’d meet her, I told myself. For now, I just wanted her to know she was on my mind.
When we finally reached Palatka, Aunt Josie greeted each of us with a hug that squeezed the breath out of our lungs. She’s a big woman, her skin sun-darkened, her glasses dangling from a string around her neck. Although she’s my grandma’s sister and from New York, she talks with a real Southern accent. Her husband, Uncle Roy, is tall with kind eyes and big ears, and a smile so wide his whole face lights up. Their daughter Callie, whose a lot older than me is so pretty with a blond bob.
Their house is roomy and bright, with the windows open to the ocean-scented breeze that fluttered the curtains. Maybe moving to Florida wouldn’t be bad after all.
That first night, Uncle Roy came to the table with a platter loaded with the biggest pieces of meat I’d ever seen. When he placed one on my plate alongside a baked potato and salad, I said, “What kind of meat is this? It’s huge!”
“That’s a T-bone steak, honey,” Aunt Josie said. “Try it.”
My knife slid through it like butter.
“This is the best meat I’ve ever eaten,” I said, and everyone laughed as I picked the bone clean.
Later, in Callie’s room, I watched her spray her dress with lemon water before hanging it up.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“It’s hot and humid here in Florida,” she said. “My clothes get damp because I sweat. The lemon water keeps them smelling fresh.”
I decided that when I got home, I’d start taking care of my clothes like that, too.
Before we left for the trailer on the beach where we stayed, I wandered around the house looking at family photos. In one frame was a poem:
Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn’t grow under my heart but in it.
When I asked Aunt Josie what it meant, she said, “That’s for Callie. I couldn’t have children of my own, so we adopted her.”
The words hit something deep in me. Callie didn’t have her real mom and dad either. But I could see how much Aunt Josie and Uncle Roy loved her, openly, unselfconsciously. It was the first time I understood not living with your real mom and dad wasn’t something tragic or secretive. It could be a kind of chosen love.
We spent the rest of the week swimming in the ocean, eating fish Grandma would never cook back home, and exploring St. Augustine, the oldest city in Florida. Too soon we were back in the station wagon heading north, the long road unwinding in front of us.
Grandma didn’t talk about moving to Florida after that trip. I figured things would stay the same, that I’d get to remain in Clarence with my school, my friends, my own room, and Peanut for good.
At least, that’s what I thought.
I wanted to believe that life had finally settled—that Peanut, my friends, Grandma, and my room on Kraus Road were mine to keep. But in my world, stability never stayed for long.
Fabulous Lis! I feel like I’m reliving your life as I saw it ❤️
Keep your story coming Lisa, it's a journey I'm glad I get to share with you xx