To the House with Purple Shutters,

I’m parked on the street beside you as I write this. My God, it’s been years since I saw you last. You have changed so much, while yet somehow you look exactly the same. You still have that tree my brother and I loved to climb in your backyard. I can see the smoke rising from your chimney, signaling there’s a fire burning in your old wood-powered fireplace. They sure don’t make them like that anymore. And they sure could never make another you. 

I continue to drink in your features and commit you to memory as I notice your shutters, once painted a vibrant shade of purple, are now painted black. The irony isn’t lost on me. It feels like a symbol that you have moved on and now all I get to do is mourn the you I once knew.

There’s a strange, small woman holding a watering can walking unhurriedly around your yard. She stops every so often to water some newly planted flowers. You used to have the most beautiful gardens. I swore yours bloomed more beautifully than anywhere else in the world. My grandmother tended so meticulously to them. I am glad to know your new partner is also quite the anthophile. She looks so content. And so do you.

As I watch her with some semblance of joy in my chest, I can’t help but feel my mind wander. Does she know about us? I wonder if she knows about the time we spent in your kitchen baking peanut butter cookies from scratch or of the double-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwiches my grandmother would make us for breakfast before we would watch one of the shows she and my grandfather had recorded in the living room. It was usually Walker, Texas Ranger. You remeber the one with Chuck Norris in his prime? We thought it was the coolest.

I wonder if, when it’s quiet, she can hear the echoes of my grandmother’s sweet voice as she sang all her favorite songs while washing the dishes. Or if she knows any of the words from Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman” like my grandmother had committed to memory. I like to imagine that at night, if she listens closely, she will be able to hear the stories grandmother would tell us about the adventures she and my grandfather got to take when they finally retired and got to travel the world. Man, there sure were a lot of them.

I wonder if she knows that a few years ago we had to scatter my grandmother’s ashes right there in your backyard. And then grandfather’s too, a few years after that. It was one of the hardest days you and I ever spent together. My grandmother always said she didn’t want to be parted from you. Her magic was meant to stay and grow right there in your gardens. The ones the new woman is now tending to with a sense of peace about her. 

I think back to our last day together.  I remember the stark duality of feeling immense heartbreak and devastation mixed with endless endearment and adoration for all of the joy you have given me over the years. I didn’t have the words then to tell you what you meant to me or the stomach to say goodbye. But looking at you now, I do. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of the joy you have brought into my life or all the ways you shaped me into the person I am today. The impact you have had on me is immeasurable. Even if my feet may never return to your front door, you will always remain one of my most treasured places.

 The place I could escape to as a child and get whisked away by the overwhelming sense of adventure and magic. The place I can turn to as an adult that makes me feel closer to my grandmother on the days where I feel her absence so deep in my bones it makes me tremble. The place that gave my brother and I so many invaluable memories together that we seem to treasure so much more now that we are older and don’t get to see each other as often. Our time together may be over, but the love we share is so deeply rooted it could never be severed by the hands of time, distance, or any inevitable change.  I’ll remember your gardens every spring and the smell of fire in your wood-burning fireplace every winter. In all of life’s seasons, I will remember you as the house with purple shutters.

All my love,

Your Flower In Bloom