If we didn’t Rochambeaux to avoid it every time someone needed to go down to the place that Mom called her “Wine Cellar…someday,” maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid of it. But I can tell you, as I remember it, spiders the size of humans romp freely, and creepy reptiles crawl in the dark desolate corners. It might be worse than that, but most people who went under never came out alive. At least, that’s how the stories went between me and my brothers.
Dad usually ended up losing the Rochambeaux, even though never participated, and handled all the dirty work involving trips down to Mom’s Wine Cellar. But on this particular occasion he and Mom were tending to important activities like picking out their next Asian Pear tree at Home Depot.
I contemplated doing the famous “drop and run” us kids were known for, which inevitably ends in a phone call from Dad, “Hi Kayla.”
“Hi Dad.”
“So,” Dad begins, “It’s the funniest thing…I came home from work the other day and found out that those elves have been dropping off more valuable items that look like they belong at the Goodwill.”
“Yeah Dad, if you could hold onto those really nice outdoor patio speakers, until…well, until I get a house with a yard…yeah, that would be great.” I would plead.
But then I remembered that I wasn’t there for a drop off, I was there for a pick up. I could have waited for Dad to get home, but the reality is it’s treacherous, and I’m more agile than he is nowadays, so I decided to buck up and tackle the dungeon, all alone.
The key was hanging from a carabineer near Dad's tool desk, naturally. What better place to protect the key than another place most people would never go, the garage.
The wind had been ripping through the trees all day, the sky was gun metal gray. I went rummaging through the big walk-in closet in my parent's bedroom to find a coat that would protect me from the elements for the trek down the steep outside of the house to the Wine Cellar door.
I found Dad's extra large “if I ever find myself stranded in the ice caps in Manitoba” jacket and dove in head first, like a swan dive into a swimming pool. Eventually I found the zipper and zipped it all the way to the chin. I threw the hood up over my head made a tent out of it, eyes would be necessary for this operation, after all. As I opened the front door and proceeded down the steep hill slipping on the wet grass I could have sworn I heard the wind say, “Rock smashes Scissors, you lose.”
The lock felt ancient as I jiggled the key in the deadbolt while attempting to turn the handle to the secret little under world, the wind howled in my ears.
As the knob gave way, the wind blew the hood off my face and I took a cautious step into the darkness. Suddenly I was transported to childhood as the musty damp scent reminded me of the eerie swamp ride at Disneyland.
The sounds of the rain smacking the side of the house were not unlike the water slapping up against the sides of the wood bottom boat of the Pirates of the Caribbean and images of the cheery drunk pirates falling off rocking chairs flooded my mind through the eyes of a seven year old.
I felt around for the supposedly existent light switch and squinted as my fingers clicked the modern day switch. My eyes were not prepared for what they saw as they adjusted to the sudden incandescent bulbs.
Gravel crunched under my toes as I crouched down and walked to the far back. As I tippy-toed under the exposed beams, I remember the weekend Dad had the gravel truck come to set the foundation for the house. I remember how many years it sat as a foundation before it was ever framed, and I remember the way those 2x4’s looked stacked in a pile like an Egyptian pyramid in the driveway before they were ever hidden behind sheetrock and Mom’s constantly changing interior paint choices.
I made it to the far back without any human-sized spider attacks and found two Schwinn bikes from the year Mom and Dad got on a bicycling kick, tread on the tires still brand new. That was the same year Santa brought me that pink and grey 14-speed I’d spent the summer been dreaming about in the Sears catalog.
Just down from that was Dad's old Golden Bear golf clubs, the lob wedge balanced on the edge, reminding me of the first time I ever golfed with my Dad. That was also the same day my brother made fun of me for wearing granny panties and I screamed during my putt, “It’s because I’m on my PERIOD Robert!” The next year, Mom and Dad got me a “golf etiquette” handbook for my birthday.
Every corner told a story, and in every story I got lost. The time they went out and bought fourteen square box fans for a few bucks each at Walmart because the summer had been hotter than the flames of hell. I remember visiting that weekend and watching Mom run through the sprinklers in the yard, we’d all been drinking cold beers.
I rounded a corner and found Christmas. I say Christmas because Mom collects enough Christmas to decorate Rockefeller. Why she kept the infamous “fake white Christmas tree and decor” cluster of disappointment I’m not sure.
Then I found what I was looking for, three simple metal racks. It didn’t have to have a label for me to know it was my spot. I took a deep breath in and swallowed back some of my tears as I saw all that Dad had stored for me over the years. A big brown box, a heavy one, “Pics 1997-2007,” a Rubbermaid with a fancy looking label, “Kayla’s HS years, trophies & more,” the really nice outdoor patio speakers, and so much more. As I glanced around, I saw my brother’s each had their own memory lane. Jared’s was complete with way too much leftover wedding supplies from his and Danielle’s special day the year before. Robert had that black leather couch from his old Bach days; the one Tessa would never let into the new apartment.
When I finally gathered my memories, and sent them back to the rear of my mind, I started to make the trek back out to the door. Right there, where I hadn’t spotted it before were tools, ancient, but pristine.
My grandpa used to have a workshop, and I would go down there as a kid and watch him and my Dad building things, every shelf had a special tool, and each area made special things…the saws, the hammers, the wood, apparently Dad had his own memory lane too.
I realized that my Dad might not have built Mom a wine cellar, but he’d built her something special. Right along with building that house, he’d built a real-life photo album.
And much like a wine cellar, the things inside got finer with time. I hope Mom’s dream of seeing beautifully stacked bottles of pinot and chardonnay never comes to fruition, because someday, after “Pops” royally scares the grandkids about heading down to the dungeon with the life sized spiders, they might just enjoy flipping through the family photo album, one crunch of gravel at a time.