Towards the end of the conference, I rented a car and drove to Tomball to visit my family’s graves at the Klein Memorial Cemetery. I stopped at a service station just outside of Tomball. The roads had changed so much and the town had sprawled and built up to such an extent, I had to ask for directions. The clerk didn’t know exactly how to get to Tomball’s main street, even though he was less than 2 miles away. He’d never been there. We asked the female clerk, and she said just keep going on the road I was on, but she thought I had a long drive ahead of me. It turned out I was a few minutes away. The car rental clerk had never heard of Tomball or Magnolia either. They were all from some place else and had just landed here in their service industry jobs, and they didn’t know where they were anymore than I did. I saw the past everywhere I looked. They saw the job right in front of them in the place where they were, but they didn’t know where they were.
I bought yellow roses and drove to Klein Memorial Cemetery. It was easy to find my grandparent’s graves. My grandmother had placed them together on the back property line, right next to the pine trees and placed a marble bench there for her to sit in the many years she tended my grandfather’s grave. Close by were my mother’s, Aunt Cecile’s, and cousin Jodie’s graves. I put roses on them all, and sat on the bench for awhile, remembering.
Then I drove to the remnant of the family property, bought by a real estate company and now for sale again. It was the back part of the property, where my grandmother moved after my grandfather and cousin Jodie died. I took the road past Beyette Road off of Highway 249. The road ran around the ball fields where families were watching their kids play, and then curved around through the woods for a mile or so past a few houses and became a gravel road in the woods. A few hundred feet later, I turned left into what had been my grandmother’s long driveway. The road ran straight past new houses sprouting in the woods and came to a forked curve, one fork going to her neighbor Stan’s house, and one fork going to my grandmother’s. I parked to the left of the skinny sweet gum tree in the middle of the fork and got out and took in the air--sweet pine and red dirt and humidity mixing all together in that familiar smell that meant I was home.
The gate to the property was locked, and no one was around, so I climbed over it, like I had done many times on many gates around the property when it had been much vaster and I was much younger.
The house was gone. The large workshop gone. But the water tank my grandparents had built was there, and my grandfather’s original welding shop was there in its expanded shape as an outbuilding. I wondered if his mushroom cellar/museum was still there under an embankment by the back lake, but I didn’t venture that far.
It was enough for me to stand in the place where my grandmother’s house had stood, built by expanding upon my grandfather’s cabin, where he kept his flying memorabilia and old farm tools, another kind of museum.
I stood and looked out at the lake built by my grandfather and uncle and father. They dug it out around a natural spring on the property. It was a pond really, but we called it a lake. They had also dug other smaller lakes on the property, but this was the main one, the most beautiful one, the one their house and the cabin, which my grandmother turned into her retirement home, had faced.
Grasses and wildflowers and bits of glass and leftover home dotted the ground. The grass was a little high, and I had worn sandals. I thought of the many copperheads I had seen my grandmother kill and the water moccasins I had so often been warned about, and decided to simply take in the view.
I remembered all the life that had passed there in my family, all of the generations that I knew, and how much I loved that land, that place, and those people, and how much fun it had been and how heartbreaking too, and I was grateful.
Butterflies flitted.
A breeze blew up off the lake and up the slight rise where I stood.
The real estate flyer on the gate said, “One of a kind property! Stunning, breathtaking views on this waterfront acreage. Pond is huge surrounded by beautiful rolling terrain, trees, and an absolute peaceful seclusion while close to Magnolia shopping and all amenities. View the wildlife, fish, listen to the breeze bustling through the trees, or take a horse ride. Building could be a workshop or finish out for weekend cabin or guest quarters. Located at end of road tucked back among the peaceful ambience this beauty offers.”
It was all true.
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