Changing Seasons

A Nostalgic Short Story

*I hadn’t visited my dead grandparents house in ten years. Here’s the story that inspired.*

It seems only yesterday, but I can still feel it.

How I leaned my whole strength to slide her glass door. How it broke me free to the patio, to the cool sweetness of spring. Grandma’s flower baskets strung across her porch railing, lilies and marigolds, abloom and ablaze. The passing scent of potted plants, blue-purple hydrangeas as tall as my nose. How I could press my cheeks between the rough wooden railings and for minutes watch the forest alive and green and fluid in the soft wind.

I can still feel that same porch years later. My chin then nestled atop my arms. I remember a merciless summer sun burning down upon my forehead and summoning a sweat from my skin that fell and settled atop my brows. How it shone through the canopy in golden beams, where the swirling floating dust shimmered. How it splotched and dappled the forest floor and brightened sunside against the trunks. A tree swing, crafted from our young beaten hands, swayed above and shadowed the ground. I can still see them swinging there as they used to, swinging as two long-forgotten ghosts.

I can still feel the sink of the weathered wooden steps, a deeper creak from each of our aging. How the gravel path slithered beneath the autumn oaks blazing radiant. How I could turn to a softer sky and watch fall gently the crimsons and the yellows, twirling flames elegantly, vibrantly, the final burst descending toward death. How they coated over the gravel path, where our many walks had kicked fray pebbles from their course. Against that old gnarled oak, I can still see her rake resting, its two retired spokes bent opposite their function. And throughout the forest, that rake’s labor, rust-umber, rain-matted heaps. How we’d dive and become swallowed by the leaves, me and my old dog Buddy. He’s buried now. Buried out back.

A brewing storm woke me from my journey; a lateral wind sent skittering leaves from the pebble path and in no time replaced them with a newer, brighter generation. Where my path ended, I broke the forest and came to a rising hillside, across which the storm encroached, darkening the wildgrass and the dancing dandelions. I shivered in the cold, turning back to our old home.

I can’t remember when, but a new season’d rolled in. A thick snow had long since covered the dead leaves, and the trees’ naked branches bore no remembrance of them. A snowfall had white-laced the topside twigs, whose melted drips froze downward in icy spikes, sparkling in the moonlight. It was the same old house, but it wasn’t. The white roof glowed its bright Christmas outline, and a frost pressed against the window and hid deep within our house those I wished to see again.

Grandma’s dead now. Grandpa too. Huh. Funny. I thought I heard them a second ago. Coulda sworn it was them. It was, wasn’t it?

Then who are those strangers in our house? Who’s that kid on my swing? Who’s that woman watering those plants? Who’s that man raking those leaves? Where’s my dog? I don’t know these people. Why are they in my house?

The storm pulled on high and the earth became dark. I climbed that hillside through the heaven’s chilled frosty rain, through the piercing wind, and I fell into my car. I had left it running during my walk. I knew I’d be back soon. I didn’t think my home would remember me.

But one last look.

There was a boy running outside in the sun, beside his dog. Feels like I had just done the same. How could I blame him? He was just enjoying the spring.