Hydrangeas

There are not many hydrangeas in Texas.  At least not the part of Texas I grew up in.  As summer progresses into waves of higher temperature and humidity and spring blossoms turn to shades of green, these bright colored globes have become Japan’s floral world.  Natsukashii… They take me back.

Gravel crunches under the tires.  The live oaks make a tunnel where only bits of sunlight trickle through.  Ahead is the old wash house, its dark red paint so aged it is more of a stain.  In front, pink and blue hydrangeas.

The car veers left, passing between the wash house and the concrete porch. All that is left of the original house, burned down long before.

The new house in on the right.  Beige stucco.  A Spanish type feel to it.  Sitting in a clearing, it's just past the live oaks, but not yet in the tall, straight pines.

The garage opens slowly, a symphony of squeals, squeaks, and whirs.  A tennis ball hangs from a string.  The car inches forward till the neon green orb touches the windshield.

No one ever entered from the front door.  At least no one you ever saw.  There was a front door.  Kind of.  If you had to call anything a front door it was the French double doors at the head of the courtyard - around the corner and past the holly tree from the garage.  But no one ever seemed to go that way.  The wrought iron gate was never open.  Even in your numerous outdoor escapades, you rarely set foot in the courtyard.

Instead you always go though the garage.  You step into the laundry room, with its pictures of dogs, men, and dead birds – a heritage you didn’t quite understand.  You pass the washing machine, the one that was filled with ice and soda during the annual Christmas party.

The radio is on in the kitchen. Soft country music keeping the silence at bay.  You step into the room, moving past the rotary phone, the last you have ever seen, hanging on the wall to your left.  The radio continues to croon classic country from its home on top of the fridge.  Large green leaves from the potato plant vining though the iron bars on the window keep the hot Florida sun to a minimum.

The round table under the window is ready for a casual meal, a cup of coffee, or a cookie.  A plastic and felt table cloth.  Matching pillows on the chairs.  Short blue carpet under your feet.  You move past another door to the outside that no one ever uses.  There seem to be a lot of them.

The formal dining table, dark and stately, stands in contrast to the inviting round kitchen table.  The carpet is longer, a golden beige.  The walls white.  Making the almost black wood of the table, chairs, and matching china hutch seem more forbidding.  You can’t remember ever actually eating at this table.  During parties it was piled merrily with all kinds of food.  White and silver dishes heaped with ham, veggies, turkey, and deviled eggs with sweet pickle relish.  You hated the relish, scooping out the chunky yellow part and only eating the white.

Before you go past the table and into the living room, you pause at a pair of wooden doors.  They are warm compared to the table.  A honey or cherry stain, maybe.  You open the door.

The smell of old tobacco and even older books washes over you - sweet and musky.  There is a desk in the small, windowless room.  And the books.  Louis L’Amour westerns.  Their pages slowly browning in the ways of beloved, cheap paperbacks.  There are other things in the room – poker chips and cards – but the books are what hold you.  The only tether between you and a man you only remember as the eater of the disgusting black jelly beans.

You close the doors behind you as you leave, trapping the comforting smells inside.  You move into the living room.  Even though it is connected to the dining room – a huge rectangular space – this feels different.  It is warmer.  The red brick fireplace and the matching partition wall opposite it.  The deep burgundy of sofa and love seat.  The gold and glass tables.  The lacquered wooden bowls full of plastic grapes – green and purple.  The family of shiny bronze quail.  The couches are covered in plastic, uncomfortable for sitting on in shorts, but you rarely stop for too long in this room.  If you do, you usually sit on the floor, playing with the decorations – the metal quail clinking on the glass tops of the tables.

If you keep going straight, you get to the guest room on the left and the bathroom on the right.  But you turn right just past the couch instead, walk past the partition wall, past the hall where the French doors from the courtyard open, into the room on the left.

Long ago it smelled of smoke, but that smell faded over time.  An old recliner sits with its back to the door.  Across from it is a large TV.  You step further into the room.  There is a second recliner to the left of the first and a large bed that is always perfectly made, like something you would find in a fancy hotel, in front of it.

Double French doors open onto the courtyard, but you have never seen them open.  Instead, sunlight pours through them, catching the pastels in the duvet and giving the room a soft, subdued glow.  Aside from the kitchen and the closet office, this is the only room that feels lived in.  Like the radio in the kitchen, the TV is perpetually on, the volume low.  More white noise.

There is a bit of curly white-blue hair visible over the top of the first recliner.

It is all gone now.  The wash house, the hydrangeas, the smell of tobacco and books, the sunny kitchen with the radio always on, the bronze quail family, the recliner in the far room.  But when I see the pink, blue, purple, white, and motley globes of delicate flowers, I can’t help but remember the hydrangeas of my childhood – next to the old red wash house just before you got to Grandma Windham’s house.