Would it be important for you to know that the home was elegant and designed by a renowned architect?  The living room had a two-story great prow window, a curved staircase and a rock fireplace with mortar lines that stretched into a large spiderweb.  And there was a swimming pool.  It was my grandparents’ home and my parents were married at the prow window.   My cousins and I jumped countless jumps off the diving board into the pool.  It feels wrong to not mention all that, but this is about a more unassuming, humble space.  A space that was overlooked when the home was photographed for posterity. 

For some reason or another, one of my college courses assigned the first three books written by Carlos Castenada in the 1960’s.  In the trilogy Castenada apprentices under don Juan Matus, who is a Yaqui Native ‘man of knowledge’.  The initial test in this shaman training is for Castenada to find his “spot” on don Juan’s porch.  This “spot” provides happiness, strength, and restoration.  Further, Castenada was encouraged to feel the spots with his eyes, not look directly at the area.  Eventually, he falls asleep on the porch and don Juan announces, “I see you found your spot.” This is a story about my grandfather’s spot, the back room.   

*****

The back room was once a back porch.  By the time my grandparents bought the home in the early 1970’s it had been enclosed.  A basic rectangle, one long side was open to the galley kitchen.  Windows stretched along two other sides giving view to the pocket square yard and pool.  The floor was a neutral linoleum which stretched into and through the kitchen. The original wrought iron globe porch light still worked and added whimsy to the otherwise functional space.

A baker’s rack stood ready for duty near the kitchen.  The constant landing pad for all things incoming/outgoing….the stuff of life.  The rack also held our most watched VHS movies, The King & I, Hello Dolly, Singing in the Rain, and Patton.  A pathos vine trailed and National Geographic issues were neatly stacked on the shelves.

My brother and granmother in the back room.  Bakers rack in background.

Over the years there were subtle shifts with décor, but very little changed.  Some form or another of a couch in a classic light caramel.  The years saw corduroy, leather, and eventually one with two ends that opened into recliners.  Two captain chairs flanked the half-wall that opened to the kitchen.  Perfect for kneeling on to chat with someone working in the kitchen or sneak bites of food being prepared.  Sometimes a tasteful area rug might be present, a low bench under the windows in place of a coffee table.  A bolster for propping up feet or extra seating.  The large TV across from the couch was updated about every decade.  Sometimes my family was the recipient of the outgoing model. 

My aunt and uncle when they were young in the back room.

                                

My mother and father visiting one summer.

         

My cousin, brother, cousin and my dad on the couch in the back room.

My cousin and brother resting after swimming.

The space held the whole family over the years. My aunts and uncles grew up, married, moved out and returned as parents themselves. Twelve grandchildren were in, out, up and down throughout the house. Camcorders of the 1980’s started capturing family life. One recording from 1984 shows my mother with dark, smooth hair somberly cutting apples for us in the back room on the sofa. She spears the sliced, peeled wedges and we grab them directly off the knife tip. It feels a bit dangerous, and some grown-ups give sideways glances but say nothing. We love it. A cacophony of voices and TV fill the sound. My grandfather is behind the camera lens, never interfering as my baby sister proceeds to climb and stand on the arm of the sofa, her chubby hands grasping the window sash. She dances, bouncing her diapered bottom up and down with pride. Then one foot at a time dangles into the space between the wall and the couch. Eventually there is some sort of tumble and the inevitable tears but she is the only one who seems disturbed. My mother comforts her.

An inside break from the pool.  Likely watching Charlie and Chocolate Factory.

Another time, I’m captured on film in the back room. A pre-teen watching the musical Camelot for what must be the 30th time. Overcome with feelings of love and loyalty for King Arthur, despising the narcissistic Lancelot and angry at the cheating Guinevere who is facing death at stake; I yell “burn her, burn her” at the TV while sitting on the floor picking my toes. My younger sister sits beside me with white gold curls (the same white gold curls her daughter has now) and files in between her toes with a cuticle pusher.

That's me in the back with red, white and blue t-shirt.

My cousin with "My little Ponies" and my youngest sister. 

Granpa had some health problems, retired early and spent a lot of time in the back room.  He drank coffee with cream in the morning and had a coke with ice in the afternoon at his spot on the couch.  He’d given up alcohol years before.  TV all day.  Gameshows in the morning, CNN talking heads in the afternoon, various sports, prime time shows, and then late night TV. Sometimes he watched, sometimes he dozed.

Back in World War II he served in the Cavalry and landed at Utah beach just 10 days after the invasion.  We only heard a few stories from the war, some of them told in the back room.  Granpa said he joined the Cavalry because he thought he’d be able to ride a horse, though he learned, he was essentially in an infantry unit. The infantry, he said, was "Queen of the Battlefield."  His unit helped liberate France and was in every major battle until VE day. In Normandy, he and a few others got in trouble for getting into some casks of Calvados, an apple brandy.  He got busted down in rank and all those years later told us, when it came to the US Army, he was a “screw up.”    

More than once I heard him say, “beauty is wasted on youth”.  The older I get the more I understand and wonder if he felt a longing or wistfulness to be young again.   Once, chatting in the back room, I mentioned thinking retirement would be fantastic.  He quizzically asked “Really?  Why?”  I envied his wide open, relaxed day in the beautiful home.  Perhaps he envied my health, energy and…time. As the years went on his stamina wasn’t great.  Besides grocery shopping and family he really didn’t go anywhere or see anyone.  

I lived with my grandparents for a year when I was 25 and starting my doctoral program.  Granma said I ‘perked them up’ a little.  In the evenings I came home and we ate supper in the back room.  We had blue handheld trays which sat on top of TV trays for our places.  Granparents on the couch and me in one of the captain chairs.  We watched Antique Roadshow and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Our dinners were a rotation of steamed tilapia, pork chops simmered in cream of mushroom soup and chicken breasts.  Meals that followed, what seems to me now, an old fashioned formula - a meat, a vegetable and a carbohydrate. I always cleaned up from dinner- washing pots and pans, loading the dishwasher, wiping down trays and counters.  

After a brief hospitalization one fall he asked to go home….home to die.  The beige couch was carted out of the back room and a hospital bed wheeled in.  A narrow but elevated massage table was set up next to him so my Granma could sleep near him.  He was in and out of consciousness those last few days.  My mother, a registered nurse, cared for him and morphine kept him as comfortable as possible.  Although he had been sober for as many as 40 years he joked about getting some Calvados with his morphine.  My mom told him she would do it…he said no…he was only joking. 

The last night he roused briefly.  My grandmother, ever vigilant “Chuck…are you there?  Are you awake?  Do you know who I am?”  “That depends, what's your middle initial?”  Then he stroked her cheek and said “pretty.”  He passed away early the next morning after my aunt gave him a sip of water.  In the back room. 

*****

The house was remodeled by new owners in the early 2000’s.  I didn’t get to go to the open house, but my aunts did and I saw some pictures.  The back room had been consumed by a sterile, stark expanse of a new kitchen.  The kind with gray, white, stone and metal everywhere and nothing on the counters. 

*****

I don’t always think of the back room when I think of him.  But I always think of him when I think of the back room.  Granpa probably would have scoffed at shamanistic concept of a “spot” that can't be seen with your eyes and is meant for you.  I feel the same way.  And yet, I know the back room was his spot. 

Granma and Granpa in the back room.