The Flat Downstairs

I have many memories of the flat downstairs from where I grew up. Mostly, surrounding my grandmother, Christine, which is no surprise to anyone who knows me or has read anything I’ve written. She was my entire world and for eight years, I had the joy of her company. Running downstairs when I came home from school, spending weekends watching her bake and spending time with her as she babysat my brother and me on those rare occasions my parents took a night out for themselves. Although smaller than our unit upstairs, the flat was still wondrous to me. From the statue of St. Anthony covered in plastic in my grandparents' bedroom, to the plastic that covered the chairs and couches, to the alcove that housed her gigadellis (Ghig-A-Day-Lees, it’s what we called chachkies), the flat downstairs was more my home than my own.

This past year, believe it or not was the first time I heard the story of how she fell in love with the house at 14 and 16 Carney Street in Medford. It brought all the memories flooding back and made me see the place I grew up in and left behind so many years ago in a different light.

 

After her passing, I hardly ever ventured downstairs and when my grandfather passed away, I never again set foot across the threshold. My uncle continued to call it home until his untimely passing and it was then that my parents rented the bottom floor. My father worked night and day restoring the unit to its earlier glory. The sparkling and shining hardwood floors were refurbished and restored to their original shine after being imprisoned by years of wall to wall carpeting. New doors, new appliances and bathroom fixtures replaced the familiar. From the pictures, I could hardly recognize the place. Where was my favorite blue glass poodle gigadelli that I had broken and glued back together because my grandmother warned me not to play with her knick knacks? Did the green plastic coated lamps survive in the storage of our attic? In a way, I mourned the loss of a different time as renter after renter took up residence. Through the years, some were horrible - taking the flat where I’d spent so much of my childhood for granted. They skipped out on the rent, left trash behind, threatened to take my parents to court, begged for a rent reduction while they demanded my parents look for a new tenant to replace the roommate who skipped out. Finally, three years ago, an incredible couple took up residence. They, like my grandmother had done in 1949, fell instantly in love with the house on Carney Street. They treated my parents with respect and lived in the flat downstairs as if it were going to be theirs forever.

But like all great things – their time there has ended and after getting married, the two are starting a family and moving, leaving me wondering what was going to happen now. And, then it happened – one of those full circle moments in life that I love so much – my brother and his partner are taking up residence in the flat downstairs. There among the memories that I hold so special, will be new wonderful moments to come. My father’s precious house – the one he holds so close to his heart is a full two family home once again. I will be able to go downstairs, sit in the alcove where my grandmother kept my blue glass poodle and its companions and remember all those special times. Although I would never travel back to Boston in the dead of winter, my brother’s famous Macy’s Christmas Store explosion decorations during the holidays will be a picture perfect memory that I’m looking forward to seeing within the walls where so much love and joy existed in our family. 

 

Over the years, I've often felt my grandmother around me almost as if she were there to pull me in my little red wagon like she did when I was a child. (No comments - I know I'm too big to fit in my little red wagon) But now, I know she is smiling seeing one of her grandsons take up residence in the place she loved so much.  For so many years, I have thought of the lower unit as just the flat downstairs, but these latest tenants have made me realize that it’s so much more.