One of my most favorite places is my Grandfather's house.
Not only is it the place where so many important childhood memories took place, it's also the same house where my dad and his 8 siblings grew up.
As an adult, I've come to realize that most of my dad's stories of growing up were complete lies ("we were poor"/"we were so poor that I used to wrap mint leaves around baseball glove leather and pretend it was chewing gum," etc.) but I like to pretend some of those stories were real and that they all happened in this magnificent house.
I also love this house because I can still feel my grandmother's presence in it.
The bathroom is entirely covered in rose wall paper, with pink towels with rose embroidery and a little soap dish featuring a kitten on top of a pillow. When I go into the bathroom I smell her and remember her giving me and my cousins baths there. I remember her through the cross stitches and gold frames on the walls, through the picture of her and her sister as children in the living room and through the hexagon-shaped coffee table I always hit my head on as a kid.
The house hasn't changed at all since my dad grew up in it. All of the wallpaper and curtains are the same from the '70s, which 10 years ago would have possibly been tacky but now seems marvelous.
Every time I go back to his house I feel like I am my grandmother's granddaughter- we literally have all of the same grandma hobbies, except I barely understand how to crochet.
I went to visit my grandfather this past weekend and when I was there I pointed at random objects and asked "what is this?" very similar to the supermarket scene in Borat. I discovered that there's even some cross stitches on the wall from my great-grandmother. (below!)
I wish I still had a grandma so she could show me all her grandma skillz. Imagine the cross stitches I'd make!
