The skin beneath my bare feet prickles with the tiniest rough pin pricks of uneven cement as I approach the house where my father and I both grew into boyhood. I am five years old, and I can’t but help feel a tingle of apprehension descend down my spine as the familiar greens and blues pronounce themselves in my view, reigning in my young perception like a benevolent sea king surveying a lost and anxiously awaited subject returning home.

The air rapidly develops an acidic scent as I rush to cross the threshold, barely taking time to notice the tree encircled with stones, or the two aged rocking chairs swaying slightly in the hot air. My thoughts are far too focused on this tiny house and its tiny people, though this is a home of giants to my own small hands.

I see my grandparents, and after hours trapped in the confines of a moving car, the heat and smell of the constancy of their bodies seems like a long deserved respite. A part of me wants to hide from the commotion and seek the comfort of solitude, but not until I fully immerse myself in his familiar laughter that comes from deep within his belly, or her warm, screeching reproaches at our rough housing and wild ways.

Food is always plentiful, its quality and make something special and rare, and I consume it with the ravagings of a starving glutton, gratefully shoving second helpings into my greedy mouth. Artifacts from an age I long to be a part of, will never fully understand, line the shelves and fill the rooms with the arbitrary and eclectic patterns of natural collectors, and my inquisitions are readily forthcoming and never shunned.

The sweet smell of rotting wood and imperceptible layers of dust fill my eager nostrils. Age and agelessness seep out from the corners and crevices, and no one seems to notice the timeless pocket into which we have escaped. My tireless eyes seek out known secrets and answered questions until I eventually retire to the cool quiet of the deserted basement, where, alone, I can pretend that I am older, and that I understand, and that things will always remain as they are at this very moment.

And though in my later years I will be forever unable to find these feelings again, through the familiarity of my surroundings, and the reflexive adoration for my grandparents, I find meaning and purpose in my five year old mind, and contentment, and peace.

Now the years have taken their toll, and my memories have been lost or befuddled in the inevitable flow of time’s river. My grandfather lives on, preserving the timelessness of that sacred space, but I will feel no remorse for his centennial passing. Once he is ready to brave that eternal waterway, it will lead him, not to the sea, but to a new tributary, where a very kind woman has been waiting for him. And when he finds the courage to embark on that final adventure, I will take comfort in his absence, for he will never again journey alone.