The New Hyde Park Lily

My paternal grandfather is probably the only person I will have ever known who was born and died in the same house. In the house. He was born in 1900, at home, as happened in those days. He died there too, after having moved into a hospital bed in the living room. And except for time away from home for college and law school, and a few years living in a nearby house when he was newly married, he lived out his whole life in the same house.

It was a farm house, built in the late 1800s, added onto once or twice. It had a front porch and a sun-room, one indoor bathroom and one unheated powder room accessible only from the back porch. It had a bit of land around it, with a sour cherry tree, a huge copper beech, and a grape arbor. There was a garage (once a stable), with an attic loft and a root cellar. Grandpa would buy a bushel of oysters every winter and keep them in the root cellar 'til they were gone.

After he died in 1988, my grandmother continued to live there, though in a much diminished state - it was as though she had just checked out. And when she died, the house was sold.

There was a moment when one of my cousins was going to buy the house, but she was unable to pull it off. Over the course of about nine months, the children and the grandchildren gradually cleaned out the house. We found homemade liquor put away during prohibition, and baby clothes from the turn of the century. There were quilts and lace curtains, huck towels and glassware. The cellar was full of books and jars and tools, and a stunning glass vase, five feet high. There were metal film canisters with home movies from the 40s and 50s. My grandfather's pipes were awaiting another smoker. His handmade ankle boots were snapped up by a cousin with the same sized feet.

One day, I was poking around and found a lily coming up in the rose garden. I dug it up and stuck it in a hideous turquoise plastic wastebasket, and planted it at my mother's house. It turned out to be a dark orange-red, which clashed with everything in her garden, but she tolerated it. When we moved into our house four years ago, she said "you're going to take that lily, right?" And so I did.

The first couple of years, it sent up a flower stalk, but the buds were summarily eaten by some nefarious creature. This year, it bloomed.


I can't imagine how old it is. I dug it up in 1992, and there hadn't been any gardening going on there for some time. But it seems happy, it's got babies coming up around it, and this year, it thwarted the wildlife.

My grandfather's house is still standing, but three tiny crappy houses now surround it - two to one side, and one to the other. The house is in terrible condition, an antique falling into desuetude. We drive by once in a while, but it's increasingly sad to see what's happening. But that little piece of it lives on - the lily in my backyard.