Perforation Problems

My great grandparents’ house in Wabash, Indiana was full of antiques. Some antiques lived there, like the sleigh bells hanging from the back door that jangled whenever you stepped too heavily on the old floors. Some were waiting to be fixed by my Grandpa T—latches repaired, paint stripped, wood stained—so they could go to their antique shop on Canal Street.   The entire house felt like a treasure trove to a little girl, with something new to be discovered in every crook and cranny. Baskets hanging from the ceiling, glass grapes on the 1800s Hoosier cabinet, huge blue and tan crocks on the porch with various old yardsticks and canes and other wooden riffraff piled in. The steep stairs going up to the bedrooms always had things piled on them—old postcards, books, frames. And in the guest room, where I often slept, there was a giant four-poster bed with a lace coverlet that felt like it had been delivered straight from the past. Somehow I got the impression someone had died in i...

I have a picture of my grandma's hands in my head. She had arthritis, like her mother before her and like my mother, now. I know it's coming for me, too, and on especially cold days I can feel an ache in my finger joints that seems especially foreboding. My fingers right now are straight on my laptop keyboard, except for my lefthand pinky that bends to the right just above the top knuckle. I look at it and I can see what my hands will probably turn into. Grandma's fingers were a little crooked and gnarled, like someone stuck the bones back together in slightly the wrong configuration, her skin spotted with age and her knuckles swollen. But her nails were always nicely polished, usually a shade of pink. She always had her wedding ring on, a thick gold band with a diamond, and an art-deco-ish ring that had been her mother's. When she first got sick, it started in her fingers. She showed me while we sat together at the kitchen island at the lake, unwinding the gauze to r...

Writing seems so daunting sometimes. It's like in my head there's one perfect way to write something, one perfect version I'm supposed to construct or unearth that will most accurately convey the truth of what I want to say. But then what if I write it the wrong way? What if my final product isn't anything like what I want it to be? What if I don't do it right? It's easier to just turn on Netflix and eat some cheese and crackers. As Thanksgiving drew closer this year I felt more and more uneasy. In the past, I'd always felt giddy about the holidays, even up through college. I loved them. Time with my family. Vacation from school. Cookie-making. Decorating. Helping Grandma wrap presents and set up her creepy live action caroler dolls. Sitting surrounded by all the Black Friday ads, circling things we wanted and marking them with our initials. Waking up in my parents' house at dawn Christmas morning to my brother blasting the 1812 Overture and throwing t...

It's raining today, the kind of rain that makes you understand why people use the word "downpour." I've got the back door open to the smells and sounds, even though water's starting to speckle the floor inside the screen and I know Michael would close it, if he were here. Sometimes it's nice to feel like you're in the middle of a rainstorm. When we were young my parents would take us out on the front porch to watch the rain, to count the seconds between lighting and thunder. I loved it, being surrounded by the storm and yet (mostly) safe under our house's roof. Clyde has disappeared – I finally find him at the top of the stairs, where it's quieter. I sit down next to him and he rolls over so I can pet his belly. He's kept close to me the last couple of days. We're not following our normal schedule. It puts him on edge. Last night he kept staring at me and wagging his tail. "What? You already had dinner." Ears perk up. Slap, ...

Somewhere in my house, maybe in a box in the attic, is a tape recorder with an hour of my great grandma's voice. A few years before she died, I decided in the middle of one of my obsession-with-genealogy phases that I wanted to make a record of what she knew about our Irish ancestors, one of whom had stowed away on a ship during the potato famine to make his way to America. I remember putting the recording aside and thinking, "This is important – I'll want to keep this." Having a record of Grandma T's voice seemed precious even while she was still there. And yet somehow I've let it get stowed away in a box in the attic. It's depressing to think of how many stories get lost, either diluted by time and memory, forgotten, or made inaccessible once we're gone, locked in the shadows of our brains without any way out. My grandpa tells me stories all the time – he's an amazing storyteller, with the knack of making you see what he saw and hear the voices...