November 5, 2003

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MOU CMLL ERLE

looking for refuge from a broken

heart and a crummy life. I

wanted to hide out where my »

Ta aa Ae aR aD 5 EL Ce rents

RO LLCO ELL

LL a ALL

LAL RULE

Deborah Hutton
OP Contributor

I fell asleep thinking about the wallpaper again. In the
two weeks that I had been staying with my grandpar-
ents, considering the wallpaper had become part of
my bedtime ritual. When I was a child, the room had
been papered in a soft blue, and black and white kit-
tens frolicked with bits of red yarn over the expanse of
the walls. In a house where very little had changed in
twenty years, it was jarring to see the bedroom—my
bedroom—stripped of its juvenile covering, in its
place a grown-up, plain green, wallpaper.

The change was for my benefit. Nain and Taid
(Grandma and Grandpa to English folk) had redeco-
rated the room for their adult granddaughter. But I
missed the kittens. I had come to my grandparents’
looking for refuge from a broken heart and a crummy
life. I wanted to hide out where my never-changing
grandparents would love me unconditionally for a
while. I wanted to cocoon in my mother’s old bed-
room.

Maybe it was my erratic frame of mind that set the
scene for my perceived encounter. I finally pushed
aside the wallpaper issue in favour of a cuddle in the
electric blanket and a good night’s sleep, but my slum-
ber didn’t last long. | awoke with a start when I felt the
weight of someone sitting at the foot of my bed. It was
hard to focus and I squinted through the dark at the
unknown figure sitting there.

The next morning, I found my grandparents, as
usual, waiting for me in the sitting room. When there
was a break in the conversation, I casually mentioned

that a ghost had visited me the previous evening. My
nain looked at me as if I was crazy, ready to dismiss
the idea. My taid, on the other hand, nodded know-
ingly. He did not seem surprised by my phantom
caller.

“Tve talked to them, but they've never answered
me,” he said. “They usually just pace up and down the
bedroom. Or sit in the chair in the corner. The man
paces, the woman prefers to
sit.” Well—the wind was
knocked out of my sails. But
that was nothing compared
to my nain’s reaction. She
looked like a codfish; her
mouth opened and closed
several times, but no sound
came out.

“What are you talking
about?” she finally mustered
in an unnaturally high voice.

“Well...P?ve been seeing
them for years,” answered
Taid. My mild-mannered,
garden-gnomish, God-lov-
ing Taid was conferring with spirits on a regular basis.
I, too, had the appearance of a codfish.

I saw this same look again, a couple of years later,
while talking with my mother. We were discussing the
renovations I had made to my previously crummy life,

and the ways in which being away had helped and

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My mild-mannered,
garden-gnomish,
God-loving Taid

was conferring with

spirits on a regular
basis.

 

hindered my remodeling. I was reminded of the old
bedroom and my wallpaper obsession.

“Did I ever tell you about the ghost?” I asked laugh-
ing. And there she was—my mother the codfish.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, in an
unnaturally high, but familiar, voice.

“You sound just like your mom,” I said. “You
should have seen her face when Taid and I told her
that we saw ghosts!” My
mother burst into tears.

She had seen the ghosts too.
As a teenager, my mother
would lie awake, waiting for
them to appear. Despite her
worry, she never said any-
thing to her parents. She did-
nt want to bother them
about something that wasn’t
real.

As time passes, I second-
guess what I saw that night. I
don’t know if I truly saw a
ghost, or if my imagination
was stirred by a sense of nos-
talgia. It doesn’t really matter. Whether that ghost was
real or imagined, he gave three generations of Evans
women a shock. Not of facing the unknown, but of
facing the well-known in a new way. I am thankful to
that visitor for showing me that my family members
are strange and mysterious people.

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