She might not be able to go back in time and sit in that simple sunbeam with Gram, but her life was pretty good.
Hannah
It didn’t matter how many years it had been since she’d moved away, and how many times she’d come back during that time, it always felt weird to walk into her childhood home feeling more like a guest than an inhabitant. Stranger still dragging her suitcases into the childhood room she had shared with Lark.
That shared space had caused so many fights.
I’m drawing, Hannah! Stop playing!
She could practically hear Lark’s complaints echo off the walls all these years later. Lark had never understood Hannah’s obsession with the violin, and had often made it worse by trying to connect their two passions.
We’re both creative!
Of course, Lark didn’t have to spend hours doing scales to make sure she was precise. Perfect. Lark didn’t understand that music wasn’t a free-form scribble. You had to build a foundation on perfection.
And her mother had always sided with Lark.
She’s tired, Hannah, you have to stop now. It’s late.
Of course, Lark was the baby. And the baby always got what she wanted.
So Hannah had gone out wrapped in a winter coat and rage and played angrily on the back porch until their neighbor had yelled at her out of his living room window.
At least they didn’t have to share now. Lark was staying in The Dowell House already, but Hannah had told her mother she’d stay at the house before she’d known that The Dowell House was in habitable condition—something she’d been concerned about since no one had lived there since her grandfather’s death about a decade ago.
She’d done a quick walk-through after the funeral, and she’d ordered beds and other furniture, purchased with money left by Gram, and it would all be here later in the week, and would round out the extra bedrooms in the house that were currently empty.
Hannah had promised her dad she’d stay the first night, but then she’d be moving into The Dowell House along with her sister.
Her and Lark’s old room still had two twin beds, shoved against opposite sides of the room. Though, Lark’s white comforter with rainbow brushstrokes and Hannah’s blue plaid with yellow sunflowers had been replaced by quilts. Hannah sat down on the edge of what had been her bed and touched the quilt.
She could feel Gram’s warmth in the stitches. Could remember when she’d first put a fabric square and a needle in Hannah’s hands.
Hannah hadn’t been very nice about it, or very appreciative.
I have to practice violin, Gram. I don’t have time to learn to quilt.
Well, I have a quilt that needs finishing, and I have five pounds of potatoes that need peeling. So, pick your poison.
Hannah had chosen the quilt.
She had learned to knit that same summer. In the intervening years she hadn’t picked up a craft once. It was all so domestic. And she was committed to her music. She didn’t need fractured focus. When she wasn’t practicing her music, she was networking, going out and making the most of living in Boston.
If she felt like bringing a man home, it was easy enough to meet one that she never even had to see again.
The joys of the city.
But she didn’t sit home making anything but music.
Even when she came to visit for the holidays, Gram had tried to get her to pick up a needle and thread. She remembered last year at Christmas they’d wound up crammed into the living room at her parents’ house, Gram sitting in a rocker with a TV tray in front of her. A slice of pie on a plate, and a needlepoint sampler next to that.
Avery and her kids had sat dutifully on the floor doing versions of the same thing, while Lark had sat next to them, knitting.
Hannah had gone into the kitchen with her mom, dad and David.
She wished she hadn’t now.
It was the last time she’d seen Gram.
I don’t know why you seem to think you only need to be good at one thing. If you have the capacity to learn how to create many things, music, hats, and quilts, why wouldn’t you?
That was what Gram had asked her when she complained about learning to knit.
She understood what her grandmother had wanted. But she had to be single-minded. She wasn’t just a casual musician. She breathed it. It wasn’t always a creative outlet, or a joy. It was painful sometimes. Monotonous, because anything you did day in, day out could be.
Greatness required sacrifice, and she’d been willing to make those sacrifices.
Well-rounded was for other people.
“Knock knock.” Her dad said it, rather than actually doing it, because the door to the bedroom was still open. “Good to see you, Hannah Banana.”
“Hi, Dad.” She got up off the bed and went to hug him.
“Do you want to come have a cup of tea? Just finished in the shop.”
“You’re having tea?”
“I’m having a beer.”
“Pfft. I want beer. What are you building?”
“Signposts. I was enlisted to help Patty in this sign making business she started. She does the artwork. You know how she gets. She comes up with an idea and then she goes into it full-bore. She’s been keeping me going hard for weeks.”
“Good thing,” Hannah said. “What else have you been up to?”
“Photography, which is a lot of hiking. Cooking classes.”
“Cooking?”
“If I don’t learn now I won’t learn. Might as well.”
“I guess. Is Mom doing any of it with you?”
“You know how she is. She likes her routine. And if she went to a cooking class and couldn’t figure it out she’d break all the eggs in a temper and storm out.” He laughed when he said it.
Hannah walked out of the bedroom, flipping the light off, the darkness taking her memories along with it. The shag carpet beneath her feet was plush, completely different to the wood floors in her apartment. The linoleum in the kitchen was the same ochre that had been there since she was a child. It was a bit scarred and worn now, but it spoke of home, and she liked it.
The kettle on the stove was already whistling, and her mom was standing there waiting. Then she poured her a generous amount of hot water and plunked a Lipton tea bag into the cup.
Hannah’s British friends in the symphony would recoil in horror. Even more so if she confessed to them that half the time her mother made the water for the tea in the microwave.
The kitchen felt so small now. Every time she came home it surprised her. The cast of the light was yellow, the wood too warm. It was nothing like her big, open apartment with black and chrome and high ceilings that carried her music up and filtered it down all around her so she was consumed with it.