On Our Last Night in Colorado

Entry Date: July 22, 2007

I'm accustomed to selfishly looking out for myself, but tonight I'm so much sadder for my family than I am for me. This place was built in '51 and my dad was born in '52: his fifty-five years of memories put my twenty-five to inconsequential shame.

I know we'll always remember the way it ended, the various aspects of aging, politics, and money that came into play. We'll remember how it was sold outside the family, to pretentious people with plans of a 3,000 square-foot remodel, who couldn't even have the decency to wait for us to leave before sending out their team of arborists and architects. We'll remember this as the beginning of the end, an enormously poor decision made by an increasingly frail and fragile man nearing the end of his life. We'll remember the conspiracy theories concocted by Steve, highlighting a bitter plan to deny a son on the brink of retirement the chance to enjoy the one place he'd always looked forward to coming to. We'll remember leaving in a trail of destruction, piles of branches and fallen trees creating a shadowy memory of something that once was.

Of course, that's how we all want to remember it: for what it once was. A summer home capable of reuniting an extended family spread thin. A retreat into nature from all the chaos and disappointment that daily life serves us. An oak table in a giant room begging to be surrounded by family, passing around a huge bowl of salad and whatever had been grilled on the barbeque, with the sound of the passing river barely containing the inevitable peels of laughter. A launching pad for political debate, led by Frank and leaving no one else a chance. An invitation to take a book to the hammock and escape the world for hours at a time. An opportunity for shared glances and eye rolls whenever the TV got too loud or the bickering began. A place where stories were shared: old stories about old grandparents and new stories about new grandchildren. A place to fish, raft down the river, drink wine on the patio, prepare massive feasts in the kitchen, launch into epic battles of cards and Scrabble, and find hilarity in each and every family members' faults. A place where time stopped and family loved in only that I-hate-you-so-much-that-I-love-you way a family knows so well.

I know it was so much more than that, too. It was my grandparents' marriage. It was the childhood and youth of my dad and uncles. It was a past that connected to the present that connected to the future. It was a place of unfulfilled dreams and shattered hopes and kind words and high fives and celebrations and stark realizations and grand, fleeting moments of contentment, utter happiness, and wretched disappointment.

It was a father who cared too much about the length of his sons' hair and a mother who worked too hard to please a man who never offered many thanks. It was three blonde boys who grew up to be PhDs and fathers and fishermen and Democrats.

It was the scene of so many fatherly disappointments, of generous gifts with heavy strings attached and harsh words from a man who wanted nothing more than for everyone around him to be as rich and Republican as he was.

It was a place that witnessed the construction of elaborate feasts, divided in responsibility amongst members of the family but always led by the lady of the house, a Berkley-educated humorist with so much more to offer than the steak and potatoes she served up nightly.

It was a house that witnessed brotherly love, ranging everywhere from the sibling rivalry of childhood to the pride we take in our kin as we grow older, astonished at what they've accomplished while dealt the same biological hand.

This was a place for growing up and watching older generations fade out as younger generations came of age. This was a place that started in the 1950's and should have gone on for at least another fifty years.

Instead, it's going to others, others with grand plans of adding rooms and floors and a studio -- others who plan on making a monstrosity of what's the last pure place I know. It's going to people who don't put a price on nature, who don't value the integrity of the land, and who don't root themselves in family and live through the oddities and complexities that come with the familial.

It's no longer ours and there's nothing more heartbreakingly sad, especially when I look at my dad and I swear I see the young man in him; I see the child he once was and still is. I see the way he steals glances at the river -- so many years of drifting down those icy rapids in inner tubes with ecstatic smiles plastered to our faces -- and I see him looking out at the darkened night -- a starlit sky that exists in Colorado and Colorado alone --and it makes me crumble inside. It tears down everything I thought I knew, about my father and the idea of strength and how lighthearted and resilient I always thought he was -- his heartache is so transparent, it destroys every notion of his gentle resignation over what has happened to this place.

It was a tradition to always go to this steak house outside of town, where the staircase winds down and the seats are carved from wood and the owner himself would regale us with tales of food, family, and surfing in California. My memories of this place go so far back, I can even remember feasting on barbeque ribs. Of course, for the last twelve years, it's been nothing but salads and grilled vegetables and rice and potatoes -- but the huge, communal bowls of salad are meals in themselves, with each of the dressings made in-house daily. Everything about this place -- the plush leather couches in the cigar room, the framed matchboxes on the walls, the fairy princesses as artwork and Far Side comics hanging from the bathroom walls, the downward spiral of the winding staircase -- everything takes me back, to a place where I'm with family and will always feel safe.

The owner died a few days after I arrived this year. It seems fitting, somehow, that he would die the same summer we leave this place. It seems fitting, somehow, that we shared our last great meal as a family here -- and that Frank ordered the baseball steak, as predictably as ever, while Steve had all-you-can-eat ribs and my dad and Margie feasted on racks of lamb. So predictable, so reassuring -- and just what we needed as we teeter closer to the unpredictable, to the unknown, to life after the Ranch, to a life that highlights just how old Margie and Frank are becoming.

I think I realized, at some point in the evening, that it probably would be our last meal there, just as this definitely was the last summer we spent in this crazy little five-bedroom, single-level home built like a motel, with the door of each room connecting to the next room over. This is our last summer by the river, taking walks on the Island and trading epic family tales across the big oak dining room table.

And on this, our last night here, even though my instinct usually leads me toward self-pity and misery, I just can't help but feel so sad for all those around me: the grandparents who had to leave this place as they walk their way toward death and the brothers who wanted so badly to stay in this place but somehow had it snatched away. It's something they'll never understand, and will probably never forgive, and for that my heart aches even more.