More of My Grandma’s House

The Kitchen

Everything about it was yellow: the bright formica counter tops, the patterned wallpaper, the cupboards, the gauzy curtains, the aging refrigerator. It reeked of the sixties, when my mother was still a child, when it was still common to have a bright yellow kitchen. My grandma attached colored pencil drawings I had done as a child to the refrigerator and back door: little red foxes and caves and sunsets. The cupboards were always stocked with familiar plastic cups in the shape of rabbits or bears, ears protruding from the lids, and a canister of grape Kool-Aid mix to fill them with, the sugar never quite dissolving at the bottom of the finished product, straws wading in the sweet purple sludge.

Here is where most of the magic happened–the popcorn my grandma used to make, the rattle of kernels filling the old-fashioned popcorn maker, white fluff spilling out the chute at the top, some bits missing the bowl entirely. Mason jars full of pears and peaches she’d bring from some dark place in the basement, the syrupy sweetness in white china bowls, the clink of spoons against porcelain. My grandma had a habit of bringing us snacks of all kinds–ice cream in sturdy, ornate wine glasses, cheddar cheese and crackers and salami, bags of pre-shelled sunflower seeds, barbecue peanuts, carrots from her garden with dill-flavored dip, the sweetest pickled beets I’d ever taste, homemade donuts, raspberries with sugar and milk. The latter was my favorite.

Everything regarding that kitchen was always pleasant–the color, the smells of cooking, the drawings, the doilies, the perpetual cleanness, the milkmaid figurines atop the refrigerator. I loved everything it represented: its tastes, its kindness, the desire and happiness it created.

Once (I think I was around eight years old), she was making me breakfast, the way she knew I loved it–bacon, toast with the crusts cut off, an abundance of scrambled eggs (cooked in the bacon grease, the yolk and whites still somewhat separate, the way I cook them now). It was beautiful, the way she would lay it out, orange slices on the side, a glass of milk, the toast cut into buttery rectangles. I was impatient this time, waiting in the dining room, and expressing it outwardly (out of character for me)–mimicking some cartoon I’d seen, fork in hand, pounding my fists on the table, chanting for my food.

After a minute, my grandma had had enough. She appeared in the doorway, face flushed, spatula in hand, and yelled, “It will just be a few more minutes! You will wait.”

I was silenced immediately, stunned and instantly regretting my behavior. Those moments of tension between us were a blip amidst all the good memories of that kitchen, but I would never forget them.

My Grandma’s House: Scene One, Take One

The Front Yard

It was the brownest house on Fifth Avenue–the wood panels, the flaking paint, the roof. Chocolate brown, brown of coffee grounds, of bears and pine cones in the surrounding woods. It sat near the edge of a row of houses on an incline leading up to Mount Dickenson, lawn stretching green over the curve of the hill toward the ditch and the pavement, gravel drive climbing back up the side. It took me two minutes to approach on foot from my house on Fourth Avenue, one street away–that hill unfurling like a scroll at my five-year-old feet. In the summer (or what we called summer in Fort St. James) I’d lie flat on my back on the grass, then roll–arms outstretched–from top to bottom, eyes shut to the bright, unfathomable daylight.

At the top of that hill there was nothing but flowers, bedded on either side of the wrought-iron rails and cemented steps leading up to the front door, which was only used as a novelty–when the metal crash of the screen door seemed just right and the longing to brave the winter ice surpassed the intimidation. But in summer, there were roses–always toilet-seat pink–and forget-me-nots blazing blue, and pansies. The pansies were unstoppable–sprouting fluttering armies in hundreds, thousands, spilling every color. But the ones that stood out were those deep purple and yellow–the ones that popped up at random, that begged for attention, that spread to the edges of the driveway, braving the vehicles, and poked through the cracks in the concrete walkway. When I was a child I’d stoop to examine them, these vibrant strays, quiet but bright as toothy grins, dropped coins, the sun. Sometimes I was afraid to touch them.