I shouldn’t have, but I did anyway. I returned to the house today to look for an iron. As I walked through examining all our belongings placed for sale, I was fine. I was even okay when I looked at the overgrown vegetable garden. I was all right when I looked at the St. Francis statue that protects Paulina’s little gravesite. And the Serbian Pines that stood guard over Roozer and Barney’s ashes.
I was fine until I stepped out of the living room onto the terrace that overlooked our garden, accessible by wide planks of stairs and copper railings.
I saw ghosts.
Ghosts from so long ago. Shiney, our sweet Lab, fell down those stairs during her last days with us. Ghengis bounded up them. All the dogs had used those stairs for their insane bark-fest that would begin on the part of the terrace facing the street, down the stairs, around the back and front and center in the courtyard. Boomer would demand to be let out onto the terrace, only to turn around and want in immediately thereafter. We’d open the door. He’d just look at us, refusing to move. We’d close the door. He’d bang it open. Then, he’d come up and join me on the couch. All the Newfs would use snow remaining on the terrace for comfort. At times there would be a miniscule patch of ice remaining. And that would be enough to satisfy their arctic hearts.
Mr. Wackett, our beautiful 20-pound black cat used the brick wall to propel himself from the wooden wall onto the terrace. The marks remain some 40 years later.
Ashcroft, a gorgeous black and white kitty we found in, wait for it, Ashcroft, Colorado, used to sun herself on the terrace. The Katzamovs, Huey and Dewey adopted when Alba was still at home, used to jump from the railing onto the roof. They’d scamper across to the beams which covered the courtyard. From there they’d hop onto the garage roof, back again over the beams and re-enter through an open window in the kitchen.
My mother sat on the terrace during a Southminster event. She was the judge for the 35+ dogs that came to do whatever 35 dogs might do. After we got the chickens, she refused to go into the garden. I never figured out why. My father would walk through the house and comment how beautiful everything was. My parents and my brother’s ghosts returned briefly to remind me of the July 4th picnics we held, or the family bbq’s and the Jewish holidays. We sat Shiva for GB’s mother in the garden she had loved and to which she had contributed our beautiful ash trees, now hopefully protected against the Emerald Ash Borer.
I saw ghosts from the weddings, the events, the small parties. I replayed GB’s birthday party and our anniversary held during Covid and the many other birthdays held under tents, catered, and liberally lubricated.
The chickens even paid my memory a visit. They used to hop up the stairs, wander in through the open French doors, check out the happenings, walk through the kitchen and hang out until I would find them and suggest they leave.
I spotted Eyad crouching by the pond and figuring out ways to send Sophie, the little feral cat, up to the terrace using a pully system and a basket.
Me, coming home wondering where GB was. I’d go onto the terrace and holler. Once I received a relatively coherent answer, I’d continue whatever I was doing.
In the wintertime, I’d stand on that terrace and look at the many neighbors we couldn’t see for six months of the year. Trees kept neighbors at bay but once autumn stripped the leaves, neighbors reappeared.
I felt the presence of the ghosts of dogs creating pathways through a three-foot snowfall to be navigated by cats gingerly making their way.
There were those summer dinners. And the sumptuous autumn afternoons which spilled into the evenings spent talking around the fire pit.
This was the terrace from which I watched snow drifting in the garden; rain pouring off the roof. And it was the terrace that served as the conduit between the outside and inside for the 35+ dogs who discovered the joy of running up the stairs, through the house, down the front stairs, around the garden and then doing it all over again.
I was breathless as the ghosts popped up. I hadn’t expected to see them. And I most certainly did not expect to have them well up in front of me with such vividness. They came at me all at once.
And they made me consider the magnitude of the losses. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We bought the house because of the land. Because of the potential we saw in a mid-century modern bi-level on a half-acre filled with lawn. We bought the property because, like my grandfather before me, it would be a good place for dogs, cats, birds, perhaps some chickens and children to live.
And it was.
Air. 
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