- It’s a strange song to play as you’re leaving, but it’s the song that is in my head, nonetheless.
It looks like my extended stay in the Kansas City area is about to come to an end.
I’ve been here since November 3, excepting for brief jaunts off to Oklahoma and Wyoming (and the places in between). Not bad for what was supposed to be a weekend trip.
I originally showed up to help my aunt and grandma with their booth at the 20th Annual British Faire sponsored by the Daughters of the British Empire. The next thing I know, nearly a month has passed, I’m fielding some hot job opportunities, and I’m finally offered a bed.
Note: Prior to Thanksgiving, I had only slept on a bed once since leaving college in August. I kept sticking with the floor because it felt more temporary and I didn’t want to “put my relatives out” by taking up a room. It was late in the game when I realized I did them more good by keeping my stuff in a room, rather than camping out downstairs (though it did take my back a couple of weeks to adjust to sleeping on a mattress rather than the “firmer” flooring).
If memory serves me right, I think this is the longest stay I’ve ever had with relatives. I’d have to flashback over a decade to hit the second-longest stretch.
During a summer vacation from middle school, my sister and I were dropped off at my grandparents’ house. It was with the same set of grandparents I’ve been staying with, though they had a different home then. About the same time, my aunt and uncle dropped through and deposited two of my cousins (a third, while briefly present, decided she’d have more fun on her own, rather than being surrounded by her siblings).
Thus began a marathon session of late night movie watching, suicide drink making, and other ruckus making. This was the summer of the angry emu. For those of you who have heard the story and wondered how we got in this situation, it was during this vacation where occasional gaps in our supervision were exploited (not maliciously, mind you – though the emu might disagree – but to the extent that prepubescent kids press the available boundaries).
No, we should not have put grandpa’s hat on the emu that was walking freely around the Kansas City Zoo. But Grandpa was watching the youngest who had gotten tired and wasn’t around to tell us: One, we should not put a baseball cap on the flightless Australian bird because it was wrong, and Two, a more importantly in retrospect, don’t put the hat on the bird because the difference between the difference in the circumference of the hat and the skull of the emu will cause the bill of the hat to fall forward and temporarily blind the bird. Attempting to retrieve the offending hat from a bucking, crazed emu – because it’s grandpa’s hat and if we abandoned it we’d have to explain how we lost it – remains one of my more exotic childhood memories.
I’m not sure how long the stay lasted. It was back when summer vacations lasted an eternity (but in a good way), so the time perception is stretched to begin with. Also, our parents kept extending our stopover. They’d ask if we wanted to stay and “YES!” was the quick reply, and the grandparents seemed to be open to us sticking around, and the cycle went through a couple renewals. It was one of my better summer vacations.
It did end, like all things, good and bad. I’m thankful for the time spent then as much as I am for my most recent stay (though I’m a little bit quicker to realize how good I’ve had it this time around).
To close out my stay, I’d like to end with a few general impressions I’ve formed staying here – dashes of life in the Kansas City branch Smith home.
It’s a bi-polar house. Between my grandpa’s business office, the areas taken over in the name of my aunt and grandmother’s antiques/crafts business, and the perpetual renovation the home has undergone since it was purchased in 2001, it can be a cluttered place. You can go from an exceptionally organized sitting room to the entryway that is crowded with ladders, paint cans, and an abnormally sized vacuum cleaner nicknamed “Murgatroid.” At frequently as the piles shift and migrate, often in the middle of the night, I don’t stub my toe near as often as you’d think.
Some items are just for show, not for ingestion. A popular pastime for visitors to the kitchen is spot the real food:
“Is that bread real?”
“No.”
“The lettuce?”
“No.”
“I take it the hanging garlic isn’t real.”
“Nope.”
“Good, because I thought it was a bit too squishy.”
“Yeah, but the peppers hanging next to it are real.”
Need table settings for 200? We have that… somewhere… let’s check the basement. I know we’ve got that two foot stack of plastic plates by the door, but we’re looking for something classier, as in, not bulk made in Japan.
Food is sometimes bought in similarly large quantities, especially certain specialty items to be stocked in my aunt and grandmother’s booths. There’s nothing that will make you feel cultured like a gross delivery of tea from England. Of course, your erudite ego can be trimmed when you buy the jumbo box of Sweet n’ Low (with 1,000 packets) to go with it.
Greenery and garlands can add a touch of style to any presentation. Thus, there are semi-frequent discussions on botany beautification necessities.
“I need to go make an evergreen run…”
“Do we need white plastic flowers?”
Note: The question wasn’t whether or not we needed additional plastic flowers. The question was, do we need extra white flowers.
The answer, in case you were interested, was yes.
I’ve recently been placed in one of the spare bedrooms. The theme of the room, established prior to my arrival, was babies. So the dressers and walls are filled with bonnets and dolls and other related baby items. This leads to some bizarre mix-ups when I wake up in the night:
Fumble, fumble…
Is that a lamp?
Bumpity bump, bump. Flick, flick.
No, that’s the leg of a wooden stork. The lamp is to the left.
CLICK!
Fresh cookies are baked almost daily. The average accepted serving is four at a sitting, unless they are fresh from the oven, in which case you eat until you are content. Life is sweet, though I must brush my teeth more often to keep ahead of cavities.
Picking a glass is both simple and complex. The dining room that is connected to the kitchen has been overwhelmed by recent renovations. The table that is largely saved for special family get-togethers like Thanksgiving is swamped with stuff. The other day I counted over 30 cups. There were long fluted cups, goblets, mugs, plastic kiddie cups, wine glasses, tea cups. This is in addition to the half dozen (I counted six) tea sets, the plates, silverware, ceramic rabbits, and the cardboard box of vitamins and other dietary supplements that also was on the table. Personally, I typically grab one of the plastic cups because they are more likely to bounce rather than shatter when dropped. Thus, I’ve only busted two glasses over the last two months.
There is a Cold War for the garage. Before I got here, and summer temperatures were still around in October, my grandfather agreed to move his car out of the garage so my grandmother could house some extra pieces of furniture that she was working on restoring. This was to be a temporary arrangement. The car is still parked outside and there is more furniture jammed in the garage than ever before. This has been a point of tension that has yet to go nuclear, but still remains under pressure. The statement, “There’s another piece in there,” has become a regularly heard rhetorical question/exclamation.
One picks up a lot of information through osmosis in this type of environment. I find myself perusing nearby history books during meals, or picking up smatterings of Victorian trivia through overheard conversation. I now know that pink used to be the baby color for boys, that special spoons were given out as gifts, and that military pressure was one of the factors that prompted my ancestors to emigrate from Russia to Canada (and later the U.S. of A.).
I had a brief talk with my grandfather about this being the longest I’ve stayed with them and that I’d greatly enjoyed the whole thing.
He smiled and said, “It’s a good way to get to know each other.”
It has been.
