Shedding Blackwood

My Dad closed on our Blackwood house one sunny Friday, in the summer of August 2006.

I. The Deal

The couple was seated across the table from us. The wife was coiffed in that particular style that women in southern new jersey do their hair. The man was burly and wore a burly mustache. And they were paying cash. You had to respect that. My dad was all itchy with anticipation and my eyes picked up the all familiar body language coming from him that screamed, ‘lets get this over with, cut me the check and I am outta here’. But legal proceedings have a way of moving at their pace and presently all was accounted for and my dad ceremoniously offered the keys and the garage door opener to our Blackwood home to the couple of the coif and the burly mustache.

It was that quick. One hour. In that interval of time we suddenly went through a port-hole that put an end to one era and opened another. The Blackwood home we knew was gone forever. The man in the burly mustache would not have a clue how many dosas were made and consumed in that kitchen – not that he would care. He is planning to gut the kitchen anyway.

We have moved three homes where we have lived a substantial amount of time. We lived in a University house that we rented in Coimbatore for fourteen years. Our first home in Blackwood lasted another 14 years. And finally this last house for another 6 years. Yet moving out of this house had the emotional jolt that the others did not.

II. 1992

I remember going back to Coimbatore in 1992 right after I graduated from business school. I went with a friend of mine to our old rented house where we grew up – lived and played there all those years. My friend Suresh Raja and I mounted a scooter and drove into the University Campus, called ‘Additional Hostel’ and parked near our house, House#1. There we were parked astride the scooter recalling our youthful days laughing loudly and intermittently at some account or the other of our mischief.

Presently, the window to what used to be my brother's and my bedroom opened and a woman peered out at us in suspicion – two strangers parked outside her house laughing loudly. We looked at each other and she looked at us. I could not bring myself to explain to her that we grew up there and that Suresh was my neighbor and that we now lived in the U.S. We paused and after a moment of silence as the suspicious glance stayed, Suresh and I looked at each other, kick-started the scooter and rode away.

There was nostalgia in that moment, but no lament. We had ‘shed Coimbatore’ – but as we rode away, I felt very comfortable. All my childhood memories of lazy weekends spent riding the bike or playing on the grounds were safely ensconced in my memories. We had moved on.

III. Upstairs/Downstairs

The memory of our first Blackwood house, a classic 3 bedroom two floor affair, is one of a continuous blur of mowing lawns and shoveling snow. This was clearly the era before outsourcing and before the era of unlimited supply of labor. My brother and I graduated from our respective programs living in this house. We had a continuous stream of visitors and endless rounds of dosas were consumed. My engagement to MK was in the backyard of this first house. I still have those pictures. I cannot find a single frame though, that does not have a big ugly plastic white cup with half-eaten sambar in it! Safe to say these pictures are in my ‘personal, not for display’ collection.

The house had a nascent upstairs downstairs problem which over a period of time got to my dad and mom – they got tired of going up and down all day between the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs and the dining room/kitchen downstairs. So the time came to make a move. My brother and I had already moved out by then. Krishna and Lopa were in DC and Mini and I in New York.

The move to our second house in Blackwood was a uneventful affair. A one mile move from a two floor house to a ‘rancher’ at 14 Bethel Lane. The move the new house was so seamless, that honestly my memory of events between the two houses in Blackwood is a blur. Emotionally the life between the two houses was one and the same. Perhaps the only difference is that the grandchildren only saw the new house. And my grandmother only saw the old house.

IV. Shedding Blackwood

What makes a place special? What makes a place transcend its physical dimensions and occupy a plane where emotional truth resides? What makes a place a source of strength and certitude that there is good in this world? I believe the soul that graced Blackwood made it so. Made it so, not by effrontery, but by silent grace. Not by wanton example, but by being so.

What makes ‘shedding Blackwood’ so different this time, is that we make the journey with one less member in our family. My dad signed the papers to give the house away and got a profitable return in this softening market. What he would not give away for all the riches in this world, is what my mom has meant to him for the forty three years that they have lived together. That is his treasure. The treasure that my brother and I cherish is the plentiful bounty of love that is laced with an infinite string of kind acts that give it luster and endurance.

The burly guy with the burly mustache will now redo the kitchen that produced a few thousand dosas. He will park a pickup truck in front of the house. The lady in the South Jersey coif will put lace curtains on the window, reclaiming the house to corn country. That Blackwood, we shed.

There is another Blackwood that lives in a different dimension. That we do not shed.