House Cleaning
Photo Credit: Mindy Stern
Returning home from the post office, I trip over an errant toy. For the past five years, my house bulged with evidence that two little girls frequently spent time here. Just beyond the foyer, a child-sized artist’s easel features a roll of paper on one side, a chalkboard on the other. Crayons and markers fill the trays, and two-step stools tucked underneath provide seating for small bottoms. Attracted magnetically to children’s toys and games, my husband and I created play spaces so a visit to our house meant fun for our granddaughters.
Our Coffee table is littered with books. Fascism: a Warning, by Madeleine Albright for me. Charlotte’s Web and Sylvie Kantorovitz’ graphic novel for 5 ½-year-old Neli, Corduroy, and Good Night Moon for 2-year-old Noa. Something for everyone – books to inspire, to scare, to grow into.
Until August 4th, when they moved with their parents to Berlin, the girls would arrive, unbuckle their car seats, and march their confident selves into our house. Tossing their outdoor shoes under the bench, they’d slip on ballerina slippers, pink sparkly ones for Neli, gold sparkles for Noa. Then, they’d head downstairs, where a knight’s castle, complete with a drawbridge and cannons, a dollhouse, a hundred more books, and an entire closet dedicated to toys and games awaited them. The shelves overflow with temptations: Legos, blocks, puzzles.
Their favorite toys are pretend ice cream cones and a scooper that latches around mounds of fake vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio ice cream, allowing little hands to assemble and serve imaginary tasty treats. A nifty red striped apron, matching serving tray, and miniature napkin-holder complete the scene. Not in the mood for ice cream? How about a tea party? We’ve got a plastic purple teapot with matching cups and saucers. Trying to cut down on your use of plastic? Try the small ceramic tea set with a Madeleine in Paris design and service for eight. Cream and sugar anyone? Too dainty for you? How about a burger? The girls loved to assemble sandwiches and hamburgers, with all the trimmings, out of wooden disks with Velcro patches. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it, but the downstairs restaurant is currently closed, with no opening date in sight.
Photo Credit: Mindy Stern
I’m surrounded by reminders of what once was. Every room in the house contains the remnants of Neli and Noa’s presence. Sitting in and around the oversized tub where our granddaughters once luxuriated in sudsy soap, four frogs, five fish, a life-sized red crab, three baby ducks, and their big-duck companion wait silently for someone to play with them. Half-empty bottles of bubble bath and baby wash stand at attention nearby. By the sink, their colorful toothbrushes, and two tubes of toothpaste in “Pinkie Fruity” and “Mild Bubble Fruit” flavors, beckon. A selection for every palate, but no takers.
Photo Credit: Mindy Stern
Choked with emotion, I go into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Right next to the mugs, Peppa Pig and My Little Pony sippy cups ambush me. Major wars were once started over who got to drink from which cup. Facing me in the cabinet now are two sets of children’s dishes with unicorn and lion themes. Holding back the tears, I reach for a teaspoon, when the silverware drawer taunts me with orange and yellow-handled forks, spoons, and knives, the perfect size for the girls to practice cutting their own food. Every drawer and cabinet, it seems, is a minefield of memories. I feel their absence like a death, and we are in deep mourning.
Photo Credit: Mindy Stern
Eighteen years ago, both of my parents passed away a few months apart. Preparing their home to be sold, my sister and I worked with our husbands to clear it out. This was no small feat – every nook and cranny of the house was stuffed. We selected a few sentimental items for ourselves and donated a truckful of household goods to a shelter for battered women. The rest, we carted to the dump.
Four of us worked non-stop for days until the house was cleared. It was a grim task. But almost every time we opened a drawer or reached in to empty the pockets of my mother’s dresses and coats, we found a surprise. Slips of paper, sometimes printed, like a fortune cookie, others in Mom’s neat cursive told us jokes. Mom loved to laugh, and when she heard a joke that tickled her fancy, she wrote it down to share with others at the right moment. When I think about that sad time, and the enormity of the task, I look back and smile.
Now, no one has died. Our grandchildren have simply moved away. Their parents don’t know if, or when they’ll be back. So, over the next few weeks, my husband and I will collect all their toys, furniture, and more, and decide what to store, what to donate, and what to discard. Rummaging through the left-behind detritus of a life so full of joy, I think of my mother. But this time, there are no tiny slips of paper with jokes and little laughter.
Channeling my maternal grandmother, who mailed packages every month to my mother’s older sister, in Israel, I went to the post office to buy international stamps. They are prettier than I expected, pink and round, and they make me smile. At my writing desk, I google “words for early readers,” and compose a letter, using lots of these words so Neli can re-read my letters on her own as her literacy grows. “Dear Neli and Noa….,” I begin. My husband composes his own story for the girls, and a week later, both envelopes arrive in their mailbox in Berlin.
Neli is enchanted by the stories and wants more mail. It’s hard to know what Noa thinks of the letters. Visibly excited to see us on FaceTime, she demands, “I want to play in YOUR house!” repeating her plea insistently.
We want that too, Noa. We want that too.
Photo Credit: Mindy Stern