My grandfather Emil Bartylla (we all always called him Bup) passed away this morning. I took this photo of him and my mom at a Father’s Day gathering almost fifteen years ago. Bup was such a fixture in my life — and this picture is at the house I would take the bus to occasionally when I was in kindergarten. It was the house where my mom grew up. The house Nannie and Bup built in the ’50s, when all of Woodbury was just potato and corn fields, an apple orchard, and some radio antennas.
We went to the historic Alexander Ramsey house for my mom’s birthday. Essie was DEFINITELY not yet ready for house tours. Occupied her away from the tour.
Ok, have a seat. This is going to take a little longer than my heavily-edited moderately-stilted prose attempts at wit, wisdom, and condensed life experience. That stuff falls flat more often than not, anyway.
Some things have happened over the past few days that knit themselves into a little ball that I feel the need to tug the strings of. You know that part in a TV show where you know it’s the season finale because you can just feel the writers pulling hard at these strings they’ve strung between characters? I always imagine a sweater, and you have a hold of a few of the pieces and you keep pulling and the fabric is bunching and warping in places. You really see how it is all connected. Ok, this is possibly not edited enough. Starting again…
The ex-potato field felt empty but not desolate—lot stakes, light posts, and the bafflingly windy streets of modern suburbia were all in place. Ours was the second house in Brighton’s Landing, a development in what would soon become one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. I knew none of this context, nor would it have refined my picture of my place in the world—like any child, my life was defined by low walls and narrow vistas. But I did know we were moving, here, to this new house. I gazed up into the vaulted entryway, looked down at the unstained ornaments for the front window. My memories of this construction phase are spotty, but I know we visited regularly during dim fall evenings. I remember little from the days we moved, but the vast expanse of fresh carpet lodged in my brain. Perhaps because I was six years old and still close the ground. That was 1991, over 20 years ago.
I visited my mom at home today. Took a long walk in the unseasonably warm weather. Checked out her bathroom remodelling. Got to talk like we haven’t talked in a long time. It’s a new perspective on time: you value the people in your life when they are taken from you for a while. Suddenly you see that things are always changing, that you must seize and savor the good moments.
