This short story is dedicated to the memory of my great grandmother, Grace Gregson, as well as my family.

A film of sawdust stains the chalky, drywall walls dad cuts the next two by four with the power saw. We must wear masks when we enter the room for protection from dust. Mom reminds Dad that we have windows we can open. He shrugs, then looks at me, his way of throwing that responsibility at me. The window frame, originally painted a slight shade of eggshell, now has two layers of dust: wood, and just ordinary dust. I unlock the latch with some effort. The bug remains that were once crusted into the track of the frame are now gently falling like autumn leaves. The cold January air rushes into the room blowing all the sawdust, in a short radius of the window, into the air. My eyes, a watery mess from having sawdust in them yet dried out from the sawdust absorbing the tears. Now, we renovate the house once again, and Grace’s owl clock still hangs on the wall.

The room is nearly empty. Yet I still sit in the doorway and see where her furniture was. On the carpet, the imprints of the furniture were still there, long after we moved them. But it’s harder to leave that imprint on tiled floor. An echo lives here. It’s a strange feeling to be standing in a room where the only thing left is the owl clock on the wall. This is a working relic of my past; a reminder of grandma. Dust lines the wooden frame, oak by the smell of it, and only the tops of the numbers and one side of each hand. Like moss, that only grows on the north side of trees, the dust gathers on top of the clock like a new coat of paint. The iron hands still tick endlessly on their track, although much slower now. The battery must be dying. The red seconds hand that once was bright, has faded and chipped over time. It is also slightly bent inward. Probably from when I accidentally through a ball at it even after she told me “no playing ball in the house, James.” I didn’t listen, because I was young, and the ball slipped from my hand and into the clock toppling it to the floor. She never had a sharp word for me. Just a look that accompanied my guilty feeling: the “What did I just tell you” look. She made me get the clock, clean it off and rehang it. The floating dust tickled my nose as I cleaned. Once it was rehung, it never moved. Not until long after her passing.

Since her passing, these four walls are words in a diary; a memory. Since her passing, this room has changed. It’s no longer her house, but ours. The soft grey rug that had just been steamed washed, three years ago at this point, now replaced with tiled flooring. We have to wear socks in this room now since the floor doesn’t get warm. In fact, the room is always cold. She never complained. She put on one of her iconic grandma sweaters, a lavender base with designs of birds on the front, and started baking. After so long you’d think I would forget the smell of her baking. but no, I remember.

3:00 P.M. May 23, 2006, I had a baseball game that day. I was a starting pitcher for my little league team, this year was the Chicago Cubs. The grass was wet, the dirt wasn’t much drier and the sun was hot. I remember forgetting my water bottle and seeing dots as I look toward Homeplate for warmups. Probably dehydration. I always forgot to drink water before and during the game. The game was about to start, but my family hadn’t arrived yet. I took the mound. Just as the rest of the players took the field, the batter lined up, and the ump called “Play Ball!” I saw my family appear from behind the dugout. My sisters controlled the scoreboard, my dad went into the concession stand to help and my mom and grandma sat in the front row cheering me on. After my first inning, I returned to the dugout to find a note on a water bottle that said: “To James, get a hit now! Love Grandma.” The water had an aftertaste of strawberries. A little extra sweetness to get me through the game.

It wasn’t until weeks had passed that we even touched her belongings. Months had passed before anyone taken anything as a memento of Grace. It was a year before I had taken the owl clock from its resting place and hung it on my wall. The clock still ticked, but the hands were slow to move. Dust recollected on the border of the numbers and head of the owl. A familiar memory, the same nose-tickling feeling came to me as I brushed the dust off for the second time in my life.

I remember the heat of the oven warming the house, the smell of her cookies gently wafting in through the crack in the door. It wasn’t the smell of cookies that made me happy, it was the fact that they were grandma’s cookies. Like a blanket wrapped around you, warming your senses. I can remember the sound of her oven ringing and the weight of the oven door being too heavy for me to open. She is the reason I love to bake. I remember visiting her every Friday night and learning how to make a special dessert; small chocolate cookies that are dense enough to be brownies yet just light enough. Then they are doused in powdered sugar. We called them fingerprint cookies because we tapped on the powdered sugar. If there is one thing I remember about her baking, it’s that she always referred to it as “just making a mess” regardless of what she was making. Even though her side of the house is no longer here, no longer hers, I can still remember these things as clear as day.

Here in this room, we built an Irish pub in memory of her lineage. The walls were painted evergreen with chestnut-finished wood molding. My dad built a bar from scratch that was the same color as the wooden border. We added a dart board at the end of the room to signify her love for games. A picture of her hangs overhead the bar, with a Boston Red Sox Banner right next it—her favorite baseball team. That was something she always used to do; print out the season schedule and root for the Sox in every game. The picture was taken on her birthday. She was sitting at her favorite restaurant with her two other favorites: her drink and her family.

9:30 P.M. August 7, 2009, everyone went to bed early that night. My parents finished their regular landscaping season and moved onto the fall cleanups. I had moved my room from the second to the first floor, while the other room was being painted. The house was dark. Silent. Out of nowhere, I heard Grace call for my mom. I knew something was wrong. I went to get my mom and she went over to help her. I never knew what the problem was. Now, I could guess it had something to do with an illness with her declining health. But at the time, nothing scared me more than that night or so I thought. I began having dreams of Grace calling for help from my mom again. It happened so often that I wasn’t sure when it was reality. The one time it happened again, I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t move. I didn’t understand why. It turns out that she needed to be taken to the hospital. My parents had heard her this time and took her there. I’ve felt guilty ever since. Guilt not because I didn’t do anything but because I knew I couldn’t. At 13 years old, I knew what was going to happen. I just didn’t want to believe it.

To this day, it’s never been disclosed to me what she died of. I would ask, but it feels like I’m slowly peeling a band aid off a scab that hasn’t fully dried. I’ve always been told to remember her through happy memories, rather than the last memories I have of her. In most cases, I would agree. But forgetting how a story ends doesn’t let you appreciate it more; it leaves out details the reader wants to know about the characters, the closure.

~

We just finished renovating the room. The sawdust has been dusted off the walls, and the walls painted a light pink like the cherry blossom flowers that bloom every year on Mother’s Day, on the tree in my yard. A kitchenette takes up one corner of the room while the rest is decorated with empty shelves and a couple of couches. Grace’s daughter now lives here. The seat by the window remains open, and she sits there waiting for us to come home so she can wave to us. The garden outside still blooms every spring with colors. Not as much as what once grew there, but still vibrant nonetheless. This room smells like a home, just not Grace’s home. The owl clock has been moved from my possession back to the room’s. The room seemed incomplete without it. There were other clocks and bigger pieces of furniture to fill out the room but the owl clock brought something different; a chunk of soul to warm the room. This warmth was not a temperature, but a familiar memory makes you smile, untouched by time.

1917- 4/21/2010