between you everything

When I was a little girl--and I wish Maggie and Will were here to hear this story. Maggie because she loves the magical world of the me-before-her. Will because he knew his great grandma and grandpa. Anyway, we lived in a house with an attic fan.

Now, it was not always on. My grandmother found it too loud and intrusive a sound. But sometimes on Indian summer days like these when she found it desirable to coax the air of a darkening day into a mite-too-stuffy house, she would give me the all clear. "Honey," she would say, "go turn on the attic fan".

And how I would RUSH to the switch, as if she would change her mind. The heavy whoosh of the opening vents, and the few that were dust-stuck for a heartbeat before finally opening. Instantly a tide of air bowled ass over elbow in through the screen, a sudden influx of air that would invariably slam an unsuspecting door somewhere else in the house.

I'd watch her lace curtains billow, sometimes stuck pressed to the screen, and sometimes dancing about. And oh how I wished I could fall asleep fast, to the sound of the fan with the diagonal splash of light from her room painted across my bedtime covers. And sometimes I did. But mostly I didn't. The attic fan was inevitably silenced. The lights turned off. The house quieted. The attic fan was replaced by the lower, fainter, somehow less important sound of her fan by her bed.

These were my favorite moments... I don't even really know why. The heavy noise, the rattle of slats, the seldomness of the event. It was a treat. A memory in the making.

Tonight the second floor of our house is a little stuffy. It was a beautiful day, but the heat so welcome midday was no longer as charming. Trapped. Stale. We don't have an attic fan, but we do have a box fan upstairs that I placed strategically between two open windows and fired up to life.

Tonight, I wandered into my room past the sound of the fan. A sound in our house which is not an event at all. But somehow tonight I didn't hear our common house sounds. I swear I heard the attic fan. I walked into my room, glanced right. The slash of light from my closet tossed diagonally across my bed. The curtain--not lace, but sheer-- dancing about.

She always likes to make me think of her when her birthday is coming. I see you, Grandma. And it's on the 5th, lady. Hold your damn Irish horses😉❤🍀

"Love is the bridge between you and everything."

~Rumi