Grandmama's House

When I was a little girl, I would stay with my Grandmama sometimes.

She had a room in her home set aside and decorated just her for grandchildren. This was wholly unremarkable at the time, but melts my heart when I look back on it.

It had painted cut outs of Smurfette, a Smurf holding a flower, and I think a third, on the wall the room shared with the hall. It had a full sized canopy bed, like I imagined a princess might have. There was a playpen full of stuffed animals, including, notably, a MonChiChi. The room had a canister which I inexplicably tried to fill with torn up coloring book pages, and a a defunct vibrating exercise belt, which could be enticed into motion if you cranked the roter with your hand. It also had a cream telephone with grey punch-button on the body that weighed an impossible amount, and on which I would call every imaginary person, and hold lengthy conversations.

On the bureau (below the all-seeing Smurfs), was a small black and white television set, arranged to be a good viewing height from lying on one's side in bed. It had two cranks to change the channel; one I understood and used, the other the subject of intermittent experimentation but never understood. I would lie in that bed and watch Mister Roger's Neighborhood. And the Andy Griffith Show. The fluffy creamy-orange cat, Meow-Meow née Jason, would lie happily on my feet and I was the safest person in the world.

The closet held mostly boring things, like wrapping paper, but did have a size 5 pair of heeled maryjane shoes, which I outgrew much too quickly. She had an amber glass pedestal bowl full of colored plastic bead necklaces, all different colors and shapes, but all in the same style, with a plastic sheath as a latch. My favorite task upon arrival would be to dump out this bowl and carefully separate each strand, making sure it was linked together, arranged by color, and carefully place it back in the bowl, untangled and tidy.

Grandmama would always make salty scrambled eggs with a sunbeam roll and butter and grape jelly for breakfast. She didn't have plates, she had these very shallow bowls which serves as both bowl and plate. And these drinking glasses that, much like her necklaces, were all in the same style but different too each other. All browns and oranges and yellows and reds, but some striped, and at least one, butterflied.

Her bathroom was the location of countless baths, and where I began to understand that I have an allergy to Ivory soap, which she would use (liquid version) to make copious bubbles. When you were about done with your bath, you could holler, and she would come and scrub your back. She had a woven hamper that right now I can imagine perfectly beneath my hands. And a brown oval analog scale with a similar texture, which I always took as My True Weight. The small counter boasted a kangaroo plant holder with a plastic bushy plant. The closet had mostly uninteresting things but all of her towels were small, fringed, and scrubby. My ultimate favorite.

She had a floor model television, a recliner (where Paul only ever seemed to sit) next to a side table full of and covered with pads of paper and pens and catalogues and holders for all. Was its lamp built in? She had a round yellow vinyl ottoman which was good for sitting on or rolling around. Her couch was velvet to the touch, cream with brown country scenes and flowers. Her heavy, boxy, wooden coffee table had a bowl of candy, always, and a wax siamese cat which was almost certainly a candle, but had amber eyes. The side table had stepped tiers, and for years was the only place I saw that style.

She had a crawl space with a dirt floor under the house, accessible by a door on the side of the house farthest from the driveway, and I remember going in there with her, holding a tin pie plate full of cat food, to feed a litter of tiny stinky kittens. She loved feeding strays. She had a dark red-brown picnic table in the backyard which I don't remember ever eating at. But her front yard had a patch of mutant clovers, and a 4-leafer was always to be found.

Grandmama's Christmas tree had those silver tinsel strands which were never allowed in my house. She always wanted McDonalds or KFC, which were never allowed in my house. She drank Coca-Cola always, but she pronounced it like this: co-cola. As she got older, she took to carrying one of those shorty bottles with her, carefully wrapped in a paper towel coozie, which she'd sip at all day.

Grandmama would take me to see Maude (her house smelled like a mothball and her grandson, Eric, was my age), Doris (home of owl figurines and several great danes), Betty, Eller and Dick (they had an organ and a red classic muscle car), Limer and Dean (Limer made dumplins and watched daytime soaps, Dean was grandfatherly and they let me play their piano), Bridget and Stanley. Sometimes Judy would be home. Sometimes Cindy or Christopher would be there with me. Grandmama didn't sleep in her king size bed, she slept on the couch, and she stayed up late (I didn't know any adults who stayed up late) watching TV and maybe doing word searches.