Nana's House

Nana's House


Have you ever been someplace and the aroma in the air takes you back to a time that you had almost forgotten existed? A place and time that is so long gone that even the memories seem to have faded until the aroma hits your senses. Once that happens you begin the journey that for some brings joy and for others sadness.
That very thing happened to me today and for me it brought love and the feeling of hope.
As I was driving down the street in my neighborhood today it started to rain, everyone in the neighborhood must have mowed their lawns at the same time because the smell of grass and earth filled the air. That is what it would smell like when we would turn onto Rose Lane to get to my Nana's house when I was a little girl. I have had and always will have a place in my heart for my Nana with love so deep that even the deepest part of the ocean will never compare. And I know that she holds the same place in her heart for me. I spent so much time with her in my young life that when it was time to to go home, my mom had to take me from my Nana's house as I was crying and begging to stay. My life with my mother never brought the safety and comfort that my Nana gave to me effortlessly. To this day as a forty year old woman I still feel the need to go home to my Nana's House. The love that she gave to me is the foundation of my whole life and she gave it from every home that she lived in.
Rose Lane was where the first real memories of my life in Nana's house started.
I can remember being four sitting on the couch in my Nana's livingroom with my brother and sister and my cousins singing to Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn, while the aroma of tamallies and tortillas that were cooking on my Nana's wood burning stove filled the air.
As I got older the singing moved out into the Arizona evenings where my uncles would play guitar and Nana would do all the singing.
Singing was my Nana's gift, she always had a piano in her home that she would bang out songs on and sing as if she were performing for an audience, when in reality it was only her grandchildren begging for her rendition of Roll out the Barrol. Nothing can compare to the joy we all got to dance and sing.
When I was able to spend the night I would sleep in the guest room across the hall from her room. The distance between the rooms was very short but as a child it seemed like miles, so she would stay in the room with me until I fell asleep. With the smell of her night cream and the sound of the crickets outside of my window this didn't take long.
I would awake in the morning with the sound of pots and pans banging in the kitchen, and the smell of breakfast that she so lovingly made for me and whoever else came to bask in my Nana's love.
All of us kids would find real adventure in roaming the desert that surrounded my Nana's house on Rose Lane. We would find what we thought was a deserted place and build a fort and our imaginations would run wild thinking up great new adventures and thinking that we were so grown up the whole time. I am real sure that we never straid to far, because when Nana would whistle her well Known toon for us to come home we could hear her very clear!
There was the very rare but very real run in with rattlesnakes, my Nana's dog Lobo would start to bark and act crazy for what seemed like no reason at all. Thats when Nana would head to her shed to get her hoe. To us kids she was fearless, but in reality she was protecting the children.
Nana had a way with growing grass. She could make it grow in the middle of the desert and to this day it still amazes me. She also, I must add, had a way with fire, she would spend an entire day clearing brush from around her house and stack it in a huge pile. Then she would tell us kids to stand back, we did only because we saw how much gas she had thrown on the pile. It never failed she would attract the neighbors, who all came running with their hoses, and the local fire department, who told her the samething everytime, "Mrs.Garcia , we know that this is your property, but we can't let you start the whole neighborhood on fire." She proceeded to tell them that she had it under control the whole time and that she thought that they should find something more important other than her little fire to do with their time. She was never hateful and they would leave with the promise of what ever meal they enjoyed the most or whatever was cooking on the wood burning stove.
Between the Easter baskets on the front porch the Easter egg hunts, or the watermellon on a hot summers day and Nana using the hose as a London Bridge to rinse us off. I loved Rose Lane for more reasons than I can say.
Nana had many houses, the one she lived in after Rose Lane we all called the Cardboard house. The wall's were so thin they seemed to be made of cardboard.
My aunt and uncle bought the house, and my Nana lived there.I was much older then and i lived with my Nana full time. The house was only supposed to be for her and was the right size for he, but she found a way to make room for me. "Room" being the key word. She only had one in this house,she chose to give it to me.
It was the coolest room, I had it decorated in early Tiger Beat, it had a door to the back yard and a shower. Not a bathroom with a toilet and a sink just a shower that looked like a closet.
Nana would still wake me with the sound of pots and pans banging in the kitchen. When that happened I knew that Nana as done praying and saying her novenas. And to my bad luck it was time to get up for school. I would wait in my bed untill she came to my door whistling her toon and say to me, "get up and see you might have to pee". I would tell her that I was getting up only to have her return a short time later because I had fallen back to sleep.
The Cardboard house was perfectly located next to the park and the public pool where we kids spent all of our time in the summer. My Nana made sure that we all had the quarters that we needed everyday so that we didn't miss out on any fun. She always had a few extra quarters for the Payday Or the Sugar Daddy even if she had to dig a little deeper for us. After a long day of swimming in the Arizona sun we would all end up at Nana's house. We would find her in her garden watering and picking whatever was ripe at the time.
Yes the Cardboard house has memories of it's own, but none of them ever compared to the memories of love that Nana gave from the house on Rose Lane.
Nothing will ever come close to the love that I have for my Nana and the houses that I remember.
So if one day you are driving down the road and a scent catches your nose that takes you to a time of love and hope, go there and stay awhile just to remember a time that you almost forgot. Life goes by fast and the little things including the houses that you where loved in are all a part of who you are........