Dinner with Ghosts

I used to be afraid of ghosts, but I think that may have had more to do with the Saturday Monster Movie Matinee than with the actual spirits of those who have passed. Now though, I sometimes feele like eI’m having dinner with ghosts, like during tomato season when I enjoy the fruits of our garden even more because I am reminded that my dad would have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of a home-grown tomato or the tomato soup I canned with the abundance from this year’s garden.

When I am at my sewing maching making the rudimentary seams that allow me to make cotton curtains for the windows in the old homestead down the road, I’ve got the ghost of my paternal grandmother looking over my shoulder as I make the seams and thread the needle, and my former neighbor, Mrs. Fleszar, watching to make sure I double-back a few stitches to ensure a strong seam edgeee at the end of each piece. And Aunt Emma is there, too, sneaking in once in a while. It is, after all, her sewing machine which gives me a chance to make magic and turn an empty, forlorn house into a cozy home. It’s Aunt Emma who stuck with me through knitting lessons, crocheting, and even embroidery, though she swore she would not ever force me to learn to tat as her female forebears did her. Aunt Emma’s ghost reminds me to work neatly as the back and front of an item should both be equally beautiful to behold.

And it’s her ghost that makes me think of Saturday night visits after church, kiddie cocktails she’d make complete with a swizzle stick and maraschino cherries – lots of them, and the final numbers of the Lawrence Welk show and that magic moment just before HeeHaw came on her television.

If I remember correctly, there was a landing about three steps up the stairs and maybe even a window there, though I’m not sure now, and when you snuck around to explore the upstairs, it always smelled of dust and old ladies, which I suppose makes sense because Aunt Emma’s mom, whom we called Grandma Hamilton, lived there too. And she was about the oldest human I’d ever encountered at my tender age. I remember thinking that it was so good they lived across the street from the hospital, since they’d be able to get there fast when something went wrong with Grandma Hamilton.

And now, here I am probably as old as Aunt Emma was then, still afraid to go up the stairs in old houses because of the smell of old ladies and dust, but still wanting to explore because that’s where the pretty bedspreads are on the beds, displayed just so – as if no one ever sleeps there, except perhaps the sleep of the dead. And that brings me back to today and how it feels to walk with ghosts and my secret hope that my dad can taste fresh tomatoes through me, and my grandmother, Mrs. Fleszar, and Aunt Emma will help me keep my seams straight and my sewing machine from jamming as I spend my Sunday afternoon trying to dispel the ghosts from the house down the hill and turn it into a sometimes home for happy memories to be made and a bit of security for Neighbor John, who is trying to save his land and honor his own ghost – his father’s dying wishes by keeping a little piece of mountain paradise alive.

Pretty wild isn’t it, to go from fearing ghosts to invoking their memories and conversing with them throughout the activities of my days?