If I close my eyes, I am there.

The tree-lined neighborhood, the uphill walk to the front door. Always a dog waiting behind the glass door, barking wildly, my grandparents close behind.

My grandmother had the softest skin. Her steps were tiny, her bones always tangible in embraces. She saved all her issues of Martha Stewart Living and dogeared recipes. I have few memories of her cooking, but so many memories of her imagining meals.

My grandfather was a man of few words. A book in one hand, the other methodically stroking his upper lip, giving the appearance that he was deep in thought, working out a puzzle of some kind or trying to anticipate how the plot would work out.

Their house was a little space where we were indulged.

We sipped Dr. Pepper out of miniature etched stemware. We got to eat Schwan’s personal pizzas for lunch and could grab handfuls of M&M’s (chocolate, peanut or peanut butter) anytime we walked by the buffet.

The tv was a presence of its own. Either Food network or Matlock or Hart to Hart or Murder She Wrote or In the Heat of the Night would blare…the volume was never a concern.

And while this post was about their house, I can tell you this - without them in it, the house lost its heart. The first time I visited after my grandmother died, tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t imagine it without her…years later, my grandfather left the house and moved to Houston temporarily, he said to himself and others, but it was really for good.

He walked out of the house and left it as was, perfectly preserved with the blankets we wrapped up in and the books we read and the VHS cassettes that filled our childhoods. Walking back in six moths after he died was like visiting a Smithsonian-style preservation. The structure was intact, the artifacts remained, but the very thing that breathed life into the rooms was gone.

What you don’t understand when you’re little and time moves slow and you just can’t fathom life being different than what it is right now is that there is coming a day when being together isn’t possible. When remembering a Schwan’s pizza will make you tear up. When smelling pipe tobacco will transport you. When calculating your most valuable possessions will draw these memories up…and will make you thank God for a woman named Flo and a man named Don who may have seemed so ordinary but were in fact, completely extraordinary.