No Rain, No Flowers

Christian

No Rain, No Flowers

By: Stephanie Nies

What was your very first memory? I have heard that some people don't remember anything from their childhoods. Then there are the people who swear they remember being born. For me... My first memory was a person. Not my mother or father. Not my brother, Lee. My very first remembrance was my first love. Christian. I can see it like it was yesterday. I was in my front yard playing in the grass making a food dish out of grass shavings and these little flower type stalks that had little seed like leaves. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you what they are but, in my imagination, they were rosemary leaves. I would run my fingers from end to end of the stalk and the little seeds would come off in my hand and I would sprinkle them on my dish for a garnish. I was five years old and I was pretty sure that my imaginary husband was somewhere holding our baby wrong.

A moving truck pulled up to the house next to ours and a man and a little boy got out. All I saw was blonde hair walking around on the other side of the truck and suddenly, my Dad was next to the man giving him the guy hug. "Michelle, Honey, come here..." my Dad called to me. I stood and ran over to him. He introduced me to Hank who was an old friend from when they were both little and lived in these houses. I don't know what Hank looked like when he was younger but by the looks of him at this time, he and my Dad ran in different circles. My dad stood at a tall 6'4 and Hank was barely 5'8. My Dad was a big teddy bear with a belly like Yogi Bear that I used to call my pillow. Hank was slim aside from a beer belly.

My dad was neat and clean cut with short dark almost black hair and a well-groomed beard and mustache. Hank had long hair pulled back in a ponytail that was graying before it was supposed to. He had an overgrown five oclock shadow to boot. My dad wore polo shirts and jeans with sneakers and Hank wore jeans and t-shirts with a constant pack of benson and hedges in his shirt pocket. He wore an old cigarette smoke smelling flannel coat. My dad had a tailored navy peacoat. They were like night and day. Band geek meets stoner cowboy. Hank called the little boy over who was older than I was but not by too much. His name was Christian. He was almost exactly five years older than me. I remember everything leading up to that moment because my five-year-old self fell in love with him the second I looked shyly into his eyes. I couldn't tell if they were blue or if they were gray which made me excited because he had eyes just like mine.

We lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh Pa, called Bethel Park. Funnily enough, the name of our street was Bethel Park Drive and it was lined with split-level ranch style houses. In some houses, you had older people whose kids had grown up and moved out and started their own families. Then you had people like us who had recently bought or inherited their homes. Our house was the fourth house up on the right or just up and over the hill depending on which direction you were heading. When we moved in originally, my Grandma owned the house and had kept it preserved in it's orginal 1960's – 1970's décor.

This included the burnt orange shag carpeting in the gameroom we had downstairs. A few years after she passed away, my Mom upgraded the carpet to a pale blue and all of the furniture was switched out. Brass and Glass was everywhere. To this day, my Mom swears up and down that my Grandmother haunted her. They never had the best relationship, both of them battling over my father. He was torn between being my grandmother's baby boy, and my Mom's husband. I think he did a pretty good job of appeasing both. My Grandma never did anything scary, she just liked to move my Mom's things. She was very meticulous about putting things back EXACTLY where she found them. To the point that she could tell if anything had been touched or moved. Well, some of her things flat out disappeared for days at a time and then suddenly reappeared. My Mom got tired of it and started having a very stern conversation with my Grandmother one day.

"Mrs. Nies, I know we didn't have the best relationship, and I know you are probably upset that we are still living here, but I know you love Michelle, and your son. So I suggest, if you don't want us to sell this house and move out, you will stop with the nonsense and stop messing with me. Now, I don't know if I believe in ghosts or not. As I grow older, I believe more and more. But one thing I can say, nothing ever went missing again. Our neighborhood was full of kids. Children of all ages who while at school acted as though they barely knew one another but the second they got on and off the bus, you'd think we were all the best of friends.