The Attic: A Memoir

Mining the Family Lode

18 I MINING THE FAMILY LODE t's happening: the white china kitchen doorknob is in my adult hand where my child fingers once reached. I am pushing the door in to the same sound ofsqueaking hinges. To the left is the crank-handle wall phone, black tulip mouthpiece mute to the conversations of decades. It remains hanging there as part of the furnishings, though long ago the line was connected to a dial phone. To walk into a complete, almost exact setting ofone'schildhood rooms can be like probing a sore: the itching breeds more pain than reliefbut one can't stop scratching. I've set myselfup as being strong enough to take this without flinching or wallowing in sentiment. What causes this aching rawness'? Not just loved ones missed. It's closer to the bone than that-a mourning for one's own lost years. Here I'm coming around the comer right into it instead of experiencing the gradual time accumulation, a receding away, each year from the next. All of us were so alive here once; now the house is a passive monument to that activity. In the dining room UncleJack has made a nest for himselfin an easy chair within range of the TV control, newspapers, medicines, tissue box, fruit bowl, and other comforts. His bedroom and bathroom are nearby. I note a large laundry basket where all his soiled clothes and bed linens are tossed-for some woman to take care of. (It'll be his daughter, Lois, who periodicallymakes the fortymile trip from her husband's farm.) Dust and cobwebs all over the place, but Uncle Jack doesn't want a cleaning woman to come in and perhaps question his arrangements-some outsider he'd have "to deal with," who might report on him to'everybody. Blind in one eye, the other magnified behind a thick lens, he doesn't see any dirt. He knows I won't interfere or intimate cleaner standards by getting out the vacuum cleaner. No, I'll let it all be. He'll fix fried eggs, coffee, MINING TIlE FAMILY LODE 19 and toast for me eachmorning, enjoying his role ofonce again taking care of "one of the kids." Uncle Jack cherishes his independence, and so long as he can keep his restricted driver's license, life can be maintained as it is. But I'm concerned when he tells me how little peripheral vision he actually has, that he drives the two and a half miles to Remsen for "dinner," the hot noonday meal in Ruth's Cafe, by lining up the car fender with the weedy edge of the highway and going very, very slowly. In the house of Florence and Lome Nilles, his neighbors and renters, he partakes of many meals and romps with their small children. He has worked out a good old age for himselfand doesn't want to lose it until the last possible moment. But his muscles and body movements are no longer to be trusted; his reflexes play tricks. Out in the grove he enjoys operating his homemade sawmill, slicing out planks from our trees natumlly felled in storms. Neighbors sometimeshaul logs over for him to cut, particularly their valuable timberlike black walnut. One day he missed his footing, fell to the ground, and the tractor ran overhim, barreling straight ahead, grinding itselfinto the fir trees until it finally choked and gave up. He managed to get to his feet and slowly made his way to the house, where he telephoned Florence Nilles: "Say ... are you busy?" No, why? "Could you come over here once?" Is something the matter, Jack? "The tractor ran over me and I better get to the hospital." The doctor who examined him found, miraculously, that there were no broken bones, though his back and legs were severely bruised. "What's an old fellow like you doing on a tractor anyhow?" the doctor scolded. To which Jack, irritated, replied: "It's old fellows like me who pay the doctor's bills and keep him in business." Since my last visit, Uncle Jack's annual physical exam revealed cancer in the colon. Surgery took place at once. He got through it successfully, but his daughter Lois told me on the phone that the doctor thought themalignancy had spread, perhaps to the liver. Very likely it was "only a matter of time." Jack wasn't informed ofthis dire prognosis. Much to everyone's surprise he kept on with...