To Grandmother's House

This is a house in which I spent a lot of time growing up.

I found the house itself intriguing as a kid. First I loved stairs, and this house had three stories worth of stairs. Of course, the third floor was usually off limits; it was the boy's domain. The girls and my grandparents had bedrooms on the second floor. The most time I ever spent at the top of the house was the last time I stayed there. I believe I was a teenager at the time; I wish I could remember the year. It was the easiest place to put houseguests, but it was still a storage area, and I did a lot of poking around up there in the mystery of my family--and by extension, myself.

There was a window at the first landing that you could sit in. I sat there a lot, and for some reason I can't remember now, my grandmother didn't like that much. Maybe she thought I'd somehow fall through the window and down two stories to my death. I don't remember. I do remember it dawning on me that last time I was there that the window was so thick because that was how thick the stone walls were. I spent hours and hours in an incredible house, and didn't even know it.

My focus then was a child's focus. I was there to play. I was there to beat my sisters to the Dutch doors and open them for the next visitor who came down the hallway from the front porch. The great-uncles were fond of giving us silver dollars and laughing too loud. Or my grandmother was yelling at us to shut the door after we'd clunked out to the porch to fight over who sat where on the porch swing.

From the little foyer area inside the Dutch doors, you could go straight through white French doors to the dining room. The dining room held a massive table. My grandfather was one of six children and my grandmother one of--gosh, have I forgotten???--was it eight? I actually could be wrong on both of those. Either way--he was from South Carolina, she was Russian, and one thing they both knew was how to fill a table. First the seats with lots of family and then the surface with wonderful things to eat. I can still see my grandmother at one end, flanked by unnamed great aunts and uncles, yammering away in Russian. I'd love to go back as an adult and pay more attention.

When I was there my attention was often on my aunts. They were twins, two years older than me. They were always trying to get me to tell them which one I like best. For the longest time I refused to say which a) because I truly didn't have a favorite, and b) even if I did I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feeling. Well they kept pressing me, so finally I hit on the idea that I'd tell each of them that I liked that one best. But they compared notes and found me out.

The other thing we did was convince my sister that there was a monster in the basement. The monster was really one of the twins in a closet making a horrible racket, and my sister had that pegged until we talked and talked and convinced her that the other aunt had gone down the street to visit a friend from school.

I remember having picnics in the back yard. My grandmother loved making us firecracker hot dogs, which consisted of the ends of a hot dog sliced about an inch or so down, six or eight different ways (so that if you looked down on the end, it looked a pie cut in several pieces) and then boiled which made the ends fray. We also spent a lot of time picking up twigs from the weeping willow tree so that one of my uncles could mow the yard. My aunts hated the job. I didn't think it was so bad because I didn't have to do it that often. As they grumbled and gathered, I was stupid enough to say something like "each stick we pick up brings us closer to the last one" to which I got a "then shut up and pick up" response. Philosophy doesn't always work very well.

My grandfather was either at the station--he owned a Gulf service station in Chestnut Hill--or in his chair in the corner of the living room sleeping. I never knew him. Even when I went back east with my sister to visit when I was 19, I didn't have the courage to sit him down and ask a zillion questions that I'd love to know the answers to now. I inherited my pack-rat tendencies from him. I remember seeing his desk several times, and it was stacked with piles and piles of papers. It made my grandmother livid when she had to sort through all that stuff after his death. I really need to get the clutter in my life taken care of.

There are lots of houses just like this one on East Graver's Lane in Chestnut Hill, PA. I find comfort in the fact that this one of the few that has been kept a single family dwelling. The people who are in it now, I understand, did quite a bit of remodel work on the inside. Sometimes I think I'd love to see it, but most of the time I think I'd rather just remember it.