The sundrops in my garden are originally from my grandma. She gave them to my mom when my parents bought their house and my mom gave them to me when my husband and I bought our house more than ten years ago. I planted them in a shady area, knowing they would spread and hoping that the shade would help contain them. They have now filled the bed that was once empty, but haven’t ventured beyond.
My grandparents owned two hundred acres of land in New York’s Southern Tier. Most of my childhood summers were spent by their pool or walking the land. My grandpa was a veterinarian whose clinic was on their property. He let me visit the dogs and cats and the reception desk was always stocked with Lion Mints. Once he brought me on a call to help a cow who was having trouble in labor. I watched as she gave birth to a heifer. They named her Katie.
The land sold eleven years after my grandma’s death, almost thirteen after my grandpa’s. There was no phone call or announcement. I didn’t feel any seismic shift. It was gone weeks before I heard about it in a passing conversation. The crumbling house we called A-Z and the fields of my childhood suddenly belonged to someone else.
I last saw the land on a warm summer day when my daughter was a baby. Her skin was covered in sores from coxsackievirus, but she was happy and alert so my husband and I made the trip with my parents to show her a piece of her heritage. She wore a white t-shirt and pink plaid overalls.
When we passed my grandparents’ house and vet clinic, we were careful not to drive on the property that was sold separately years ago. There were no dogs to greet us, no freezer full of ice cream, and my grandpa’s van was gone. The vet clinic was silent. I had visited my last sick cat long ago.
My parents’ Jeep took us by A-Z with its broken windows and pigeons. The paint was gone and the outside wood bare, but it was once a grand house with its large windows and wide hallways. As a child I would occasionally go inside and surround myself in the busy wallpaper and family relics that my grandparents had put in storage.
Evidence from my grandpa’s garden could still be seen if you knew where to look. The old pool—now filled in, was beyond it and I could almost smell the chlorine and sunscreen. The nearby blackberry bushes were heavy with berries that used to dribble down my chin and stain my clothes. I don’t remember seeing my grandma’s sundrops.
We drove up the path created by years of cars and vans and tractors. The corn from the farmer who rented the land was short enough to still see the hills and trees. My grandpa used to drive his van up the same path every time we visited. I’d see it loping up the uneven earth, always wondering if it would make the trip. Once he let my sisters and I ride on the back of the bumper with my cousins. My mom was furious.
From the Jeep I couldn’t see the pond. Years of neglect let the landscape swallow it, but I knew it was there. I used to visit the tadpoles in the spring and stare at the bright green algae that looked so beautiful to me. The dogs would swim, their coats going from muddy to wet to muddy again when they got out. I skipped rocks and threw sticks but never once ventured into the murky waters.
We parked by the old cabin which was surrounded by tall grass and shrubs. I remembered laying in the grass under the stars before curling up in my sleeping bag inside the cozy walls. There was a little kitchen which made it feel like a real house. We made campfires nearby, always staying clear of exploding rocks that got too hot. The sticks from the yellow birch trees that we used to roast marshmallows smelled like wintergreen.
“Once,” my dad told me after I set my marshmallow on fire, “I went to blow out the fire and my marshmallow fell on my face.”
I still liked my marshmallows crispy, but I always made sure to blow on them from a distance.
We got out of the Jeep and my husband strapped my daughter into our hiking backpack and I pulled up my socks and followed my parents into the woods. I was terrified of ticks even though I had never seen one as a child.
We walked along the freshwater stream that softly babbled as it twisted and turned through the trees. I never saw my grandma walk the land. For me, multiple sclerosis had always been present. She rode a scooter around the house and yard when I was young and went into the pool, but I never saw her walk among the trees and hills.
“Can you see campsites being here?” my dad asked.
We nodded. Desperate to find a use for the land we’d talked about everything from a Christmas tree farm to camping.
The forest floor was covered in green ferns that softened our steps and I tried to breathe in the fresh air to somehow store it in my memory forever. When I was eleven my uncle married a woman from Manhattan and her family walked the land after their country wedding. “There are so many trees,” I remember a girl said. I didn’t think so back then. There seemed to be a regular amount of trees to me. But that day all I saw was green and more green.
My daughter was content in the backpack and we talked to her about everything as we walked. That’s an orange salamander and those are birds chirping. Do you see the stream? That’s water flowing over rocks. Those trees are pine trees. The ferns are green and that blue above us is the sky.
When we made our way back to the Jeep I decided to ride with my dad while my mom, husband, and daughter walked back down the path toward my grandparents’ house. I watched them until their forms dipped beneath the top of the hill and there was only corn to see. As a child I ran the same path—arms pumping, legs sprinting, and never tiring as my body carried me over rocks and dirt and grass. My daughter’s soft baby legs were still too young for running, but I as I watched her disappear behind the landscape I hoped that someday she would understand.