Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Troubler of Israel

Home
About

Home
Evangelical
A Goodbye to Grandma’s House

A Goodbye to Grandma’s House

Last updated on: March 29, 2021 at 4:16 pm by G. Shane Morris

A Goodbye to Grandma’s House 2021-03-29T16:16:39-04:00 G. Shane Morris

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A house is an inanimate object, and as a terrifying number of people in the western United States and the Gulf Coast can now attest, houses are objects that burn or blow away. But these stacks of wood-and-nails also have a way of becoming symbolic of more important things, especially to children.

That was the case with my Grandmother’s house of almost twenty-five years, which still stands, but now belongs to a stranger. Saying goodbye to that house and moving Grandma into a smaller one feels like the close of a chapter I wasn’t finished reading. But remembering that place has renewed my resolve to give my own children a home, not just somewhere to live. It’s also reminded me to fill the walls of that home with more than just two generations.

Growing up, one of the greatest gifts I enjoyed was my extended family, and “Grandma and Grandpa’s house” was a focal point for that gift. There was a stretch of years that began before my memory sharpens and ends around 2010 during which my maternal grandparents, together with my aunts, their husbands, and my cousins, gathered for birthdays, anniversaries, Thanksgiving, Memorial and Labor Days, and especially for Christmas.

Usually this happened at a two-story, tin-roofed, unmistakably southern “farmhouse” ensconced in a Floridian Eden of live oaks, orchids, and bamboo. The air there was always thick with butterflies and the rattle of Grandpa’s tractor as he dug a new pond or flower bed (he had two green thumbs and probably a couple of fingers). But if nostalgia were a sound, it might be Grandma’s festive “hello!” as grandkids burst through the back door into the kitchen (hardly anybody used the front). The chime of the grandfather clock might as well have been church bells for me.

Christmas became an especially high feast day for our Baptist family. A clan-wide slumber party developed in which fifteen celebrants fresh from candle-light Christmas Eve services would descend on this home with casseroles, cheese platters, salads, desserts, and gifts to close the year as only our family knew how. A soundtrack of outdated Christian albums played as we tucked into Grandma’s pot roast soup and found ourselves breathless over jokes that probably weren’t funny outside of those walls.

After a while, we would bed down, all the cousins in sleeping bags in the “game room” and the adults eventually settling throughout the house. Someone usually ended up on the couch beside the Christmas tree. The next morning, of course, was an early and boisterous one. This is how it unfolded annually, and somehow Grandma and Grandpa never seemed to tire of it.

In the years before Grandpa died, that house took on new significance. My wife and I spent several months there as a stopover on our planned move to Northern Virginia. We had our first baby while living there, and watched more “Jeopardy” than anyone our age likely ever had. Long talks on the porch and in the living room helped me understand my grandfather as few young men understand their family’s patriarch. He and Grandma needed no lessons in hospitality; we weren’t the only family members who spent a season in the game-room-turned-guest-suite. In the final years I knew that home, it became as much a refuge for extended family as a place for us to celebrate.

Without the strength of Grandpa’s personality, that house seemed to lose an intangible quality. It took on the stillness of a memorial, and the light seemed to dim a little. The extended family gatherings became rarer and faces were missing. Of course, much of this was simply adulthood setting in for me. The torch passed hands the moment my parents became grandparents, and I acknowledged what of course I had always known: that Grandma’s house was never anything more than a house.

But boxing up furniture, pictures, and decorations that were fixtures of my childhood still felt sacrilegious. The conviction in every young heart that grandparents are permanent has a way of rubbing off on the boards and nails within which they live. To discover that these people are mortal—travelers near the end of a journey you yourself are on—is a jolt.

Yet as I sit with Grandma and reminisce, as I remember my Dad’s parents, who finished their race some years earlier, and as I watch my own sons and daughter walk through the heedless eternity of childhood, I realize that nothing of substance was lost behind that “Sold” sign. If you know what to look for, “Grandma and Grandpa’s house” can be any old place, game room or no—tractor or no. The music of extended kinship, sanctified by rituals that resonate with eternity, can echo from any set of walls. I know because I’ve watched my own parents’ home take on that sacral quality in my children’s eyes. I can even see the beginnings of it in our home.

All of this makes me suspect that God has no qualms with heavenly treasures sanctifying the earthly arks we construct, nor does He mind if we look back sadly when they change hands. My nostalgia is not for a structure but for the love and hospitality that filled it—for the temporal glimpse I was given there of an eternal feast. Knowing this has determined me to fill new vessels with that grace of intergenerational love, and to give my kids what was given to me. And if someday the place I live takes on the hallowed title “Grandma and Grandpa’s house”—invested with all the meaning I put into those words as a child—I will have succeeded.

This piece was originally published at BreakPoint.org.

Previous Post

November 23, 2020

Did Purity Culture Overstate the Danger of Sin?

Next Post

March 29, 2021 There Are No Egalitarians When the Dog Attacks

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Abortion Animals Apologetics Archaeology Atheism Bible Books Church Creationism Culture of Death Debate Devotion Economics Ethics Free Will Gender Issues History Holidays Intelligent Design Islam Liberalism Life Advice Media Movies Music Nature Parenting Philosophy Politics Prayer Race Relationships Science Sex Stories Technology Terrorism The Point Theology Uncategorized Youth

Select a Month July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 November 2020 September 2020 May 2020 April 2020 February 2020 January 2020 November 2019 October 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who is credited with writing much of Proverbs?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Hezekiah Agur David Solomon