42 Lovell Avenue

Grandma’s wooden box of clothespins on the painted grey and white veranda…old metal lawn chairs with speckled red paint—how far can I rock before going all the way over or Grandma warning me to stop? A garden tucked beside a leaning old garage, a row of boxwood hedges and trees circled with Hostas and Lily of the Valley. Huge Hydrangeas as large as tabletops, bursting with fist-sized blooms of purple and blue. And the trees along one side of the sloping driveway, that grew taller with every one of my birthdays; head tall to me then, but reaching far into the sky and wider than Grandpa’s chair now. The white station wagon in the driveway with a statue of St. Joseph on the dash, red leather bench seats and the smell of his cigars forever inside. Lemon meringue pies and ham and mustard sandwiches, clothes hampers or stools with a stack of phone books as make-shift chairs pulled up to an extended kitchen table for the extra family Grandma’shouse was bursting with—us! A window fan humming in the den window, Grandpa’s pencils in a tin cup on his desk, the sleeper sofa my Mom and Dad squeezed into every night of our visit, while my sister and I were tucked in together in the spare room just feet away.
I remember one of the most peaceful, sweet mornings of my life, waking up in that room.
I was in the old twin bed, one my mother herself slept in many years before as a child herself. Statues of Mary and Joseph on the bureau under lacey doilies and white, sheer ruffled curtains at the window, a glimpse of lush green yard, Mrs. Gherard’s home next door. Bird song wafted through the open window, from one of the many trees shading the lawn.
I had no needs then, no compulsive urges, no scattered thoughts, no regrets, no sorrows. Just simple, complete happiness; pure-white happiness and a state of nothingness and wholeness at the same time. Content and safe as if I were enveloped in the very arms of a winged angel.