165/365 New

Mike's grandmother died in February, 2004. Sometime later, once it was summer, we went over to her old house down in Cairo to look over things, see if there was anything Mike wanted. This is a hard place to find oneself as an in-law. I barely knew this woman and here I am being asked if I want this or that. I want nothing that will cause a rift between my nuclear family and any of yours. But since Mike refused to have an opinion from afar, we went over there one visit to Cairo and looked around.

How much everything had already changed. Most everything was gone, the house was closed in and hot. Mike sat down and went through dusty books. My mother-in-law offered us a quilt made of double-knit, total kitsch from my point of view 40 years after it was made. Trip Around the World. Of course I took it.

They were trying to get the house ready to sell. Eventually it would, only to have tragedy strike the family who bought it. It wound up on the auction block and sold again for a shockingly low sum. Another Cairo house to fall to pieces. Nobody in the family had enough money to keep it up simply as an ode to idyllic childhood. Already in 4 or 5 months it needed a great deal of upkeep, compounded by several decades of benevolent neglect.

Sophia was just turning 3. I was pregnant with Maeve, having a hard time breathing in the stuffy house, no windows open, no air conditioning on. I was ready to head back out and sit in the van, wait for them to come out with their books and odds and ends. Sophia holds my hand and asks,

"Why did Grandma Stout die?"

"Oh," I sigh, "because she got very sick. She was old, Sophia. And old people die."

Her little brain worked on that a minute and then she answers, "But we're still new, aren't we?"

"Yes, Sophia, we're still new."