Grandma's House

The drive seemed to take forever when we were kids, other then when we could sleep, the landscape so similar, linear; soft lines layered yellow and green then blue with soft white clouds as far as the eye could see. The prospect of being there always seemed so close; one field after the next, this one could be the last before we get there, or this one. When we’d finally turn left after Raymore, the monologue of landscape suddenly became a dialogue. Over the train tracks, the furthest we’d go out of town as kids… past the graveyard, where Grandpa is, the only place he’s ever been since we’ve been alive…right at the imposing church where Grandma would go everyday and we’d be expected on Sundays…past Grandma’s garden which comprised of her entire backyard…and finally at the corner of 1st Ave and Queen Street: Grandma’s House.

The streets were usually empty, but we’d known, we’d heard, we could feel the past there. Stories of kids riding their bikes, playing kick the can, stealing chocolate bars from the store. We could imagine the instant playground the vast green fields would make with kids being shooed out of the house on a hot summer day. Playing hide and seek in the tall grass, finding a swimming hole, flattening pennies on the train tracks.

The basement was a scary place as kids; we’d imagine ghosts playing the old, out-of-tune piano and run up the stairs as fast as we could if Grandma had us go down for a jar of preserves. When we got older, we'd wonder if teens played spin the bottle down there, or young girls played with makeup and gossiped. We found old dolls, played with antique toys, and imagined what it would be like to grow up back when Mom did or Auntie did.

Days, weeks were spent with Grandma, making buns, watching Young & the Restless at dinner time (the big meal of the day out in the prairies) eating cabbage rolls, pickled beets, the warm buns from the oven, sometimes canned peaches for dessert, sometimes butterscotch pudding, warm with the skin on top. We’d be out in the garden picking ice cream pails full of raspberries, staining our hands red, trying to avoid the prickly stems. Helping Grandma with the laundry, putting it on the line, watching it fly in the wind. Grandma would give us money to go down to the store and buy ourselves a dilly bar or a fudgesicle or some five cent candies, sometimes she’d ask us to pick up some milk too, and put it on her tab.

It was a quiet oasis, sometimes too quiet for us kids, but a place where summer seemed to last forever, and the simpler things were what made the day run; mealtimes were pivotal points, the preparation before and the cleanup afterwards; a walk down to the store was a treat, complete with ice cream and candy; Church was the social event of the week; and most of our food was provided by Grandma’s abundant garden and unrivalled cooking.


A place where complicated was so much less so, and the quiet is punctuated by the train coming through town, Grandma’s House will always be there to me.