Completely in the Dark

It isn’t at the beginning, but closer to the beginning than now.

The year is 1964, the place Greensburg, Ind.

Here’s a Google Map of the place. (Make sure it’s in Street View.)

It’s my maternal grandparents’ home, the place they lived at since I was a baby.

Although my mother was born in New Castle, Ind., this was her girlhood home.

It’s the only place that instantly calls up some of my earliest memories.

There’s the garage my grandfather, Raymond, tinkered around in, mostly to stay away from the foul moods of Mamie, my grandmother, third-generation Irish and every ounce of it.

There used to be an ivy-strewn trellis between the garage and house, through which lead to the back door where you entered into the sparkling clean kitchen Mamie always kept: the scent of bland Sunday pot roast and overcooked veggies emerging from her shiny white ceramic…