.: Thanksgiving: Grand VDG Home

I've only been in the home of my Van De Graaff grandparents a handful of times, and have even fewer memories. This visit was poignant in a variety of ways, but I experienced a new, and as yet, unknown sensation.

I felt connected with my Dad's childhood.

As an adult, I felt frenzied to experience his secret places, his spots of maturity, and his moments of greatness. We held a turkey bowl on his elementary school soccer field; I played "bear-hunting" with young cousins in the dense forested area of his backyard; I cleaned the pink bathroom by which his Mom laid claim to femininity in a household of all boys.

Below is a sampling of spots and images that are nearly unchanged from the boyish days of my father's youth.

My grandpa, Wayne Van De Graaff, adorned in his Navy attire while still a young man.

I have a faint memory of window shopping in Moab, UT with my family. It was an old eclectic antique shop with worthless menagerie scattered all over dusty shelves. There were figurines made from melted glass on a shelf above my head. My sister and I pulled a chair next to the shelf and inspected the whole collection for my grandma's prized love: hummingbirds. I believe we may have found one, but I'll never forget picking each up and looking behind it, trying to decipher what each clear creature was.

When I was young, this was placed next to the kitchen window. I remember having a nightmare that the jaws came off the wall, and a shark body came with them. My Dad has one of these hung up in our home- albeit a smaller replica.

Shark teeth. Strung up :)

Grandma's hummingbird feeder.

This was secret when I was young, too.

A collection of sacred artifacts given to my Grandparents during my Grandpa's tenure as Head of Immigration. I would spend hours inspecting each one. When I wrote my sixth grade report on Mexico, I searched books looking for pictures of these same types of statues. I had hoped to document them. I didn't make the connection that they were original.