I remember the old homeplace in Chandler.  The one across the street from Great-Grandmother Harden’s house with the dirt-filled swimming pool.  Just an acre, it was surrounded by walls of oleanders, pecan trees, and citrus groves.  Everytime I stepped inside, I was enchanted.

I remember the summers we spent there as children, my sister Becky and I.
I remember the parrot Izzador, that would never say “Polly want a cracker” even when you pronounced it very carefully for her to understand.  Over and over.  And the duck Beelzebub, who would nip at small children who stayed in his cage too long.
I remember Popo feeding the cats- cats that came from everywhere- cats that had been thrown into their woodpile, strays and wanderers.  He took time every night and morning to prepare a dish- full of meow mix and milk, meow mix and milk, carefully stirred.  It never mattered how many or who came.  He always fed those who came.  And he let us watch.

I remember begging Granny and Popo to irrigate.

“Can we irrigate today?”
“No, not yet.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

Then, finally, Popo would set his wading boots by the door.  We knew the water was coming.  We went to bed early those nights.  Granny would never allow us to sleep in our swimsuits, but we always had them on before she would come wake us up.  She would come in early those mornings.  Often before the sun.  I remember crawling around in the irrigation ditches.  We became alligators, sharks, and fish.  We were wild and wet, running, splashing uncontrollably through the grass covered with two inches of water.  Granny and Popo never played, but they worked the ditches.

“What are you doing, Popo?”
we would ask, our hair plastered every-which-way, our bellies heaving from breathlessness and joy.  Then he would
stop and smile his wonderful, wrinkly smile.

“I’m helping the water run,” he would reply.

We would smile at his funny way and run away laughing, skipping, ducking away from the wasps that hovered so near the
water’s surface.

I remember the little chest in the room above the garage where Granny kept scraps of material.  It was Granny’s place.  Full of pins, needles, and paper.  I remember her hands showing me how to cut and sew and create life from scraps.
Life from scraps.  I remember the so-called eight hour quilt in Woman’s Day.  The one that took my fourteen years and all Granny’s sixty-two years a whole three weeks to complete, laughing everyday on our knees about our eight-hours-a-day-for-two-weeks-quilt.  I remember learning to crochet with the hook.  To create bags and scarves and rugs made from Aunt Nancy’s holey gym socks dyed in purple and pink RIT dye.  I remember the green plaid capri pants she helped me make for my first day of seventh grade.  How she explained that the cutting was everything- match the plaid as you cut, and you save worry and mismatch later.  Take the extra time to do it right.  I remember the sewing machine she and Popo gave me on my sixteenth birthday, a rite of passage.

But most of all, I remember my Popo, hunched over in his chair at the head of the table, his white crowned head resting in his heavy hand, tired from fighting a battle I did not understand- a battle against the city that would not relent.  I remember crying as my mother told me that the city had won- they would take the land to widen the road.  I remember wandering around the old home place, knowing it would be the last time, snatching memories and roses- roses I wished would dry and keep like Granny’s did.  Memories were all we would have left in the dust of progress for the new freeway.