My Grandmother's House

    In honor of Valentine's Day, I'm gonna talk about a place I dearly LOVE and remember like I was there yesterday. My Grandmother's house. 

    I don't ever remember NOT being at my grandmother's house when I was 4 or 5 years old. I know I lived with my natural parents nearby but the specifics are very momentary and quick, like a Polaroid picture. My grandmother's house, however, is in live technicolor. I'm going to be 50 years old next week and I still remember the layout of the house, mostly the family room, or the davenport, as she called it. The HUGE dining room table(she raised 5 kids) and the Frankenstein Castle-like chandelier above it. She would lovingly serve me grilled baloney and American cheese sandwiches and Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. I would be watching Sesame Street. I remember vividly the first time I ever saw Morgan Freeman was watching him dancing on The Electric Company at my grandmother's house. Sometimes we would watch an old movie, like 1939's The Hunchback of Notre Dame; I remember that movie in particular. 

    She's been gone for twelve year now, but i still remember the rose bush outside the kitchen window, climbing up the wall. She was an avid gardener, and I am as well. She only grew geraniums and impatiens, very cheap but her garden in front and back of the house was a vision of red and white geraniums or impatiens. 

    After I came to live with my uncle (her oldest son) and aunt when I was seven, we regularly went to Nana Marshall's house every Christmas. Even though it was an hour drive, my uncle grumbled because there was no freeway between our house and Nana's. When you entered the front door, you entered the largest room of the house, the living room. To the immediate right there was the Christmas tree in the view of the large front window. The presents were there and you could smell the heavenly scent of my grandmother's homemade tomato sauce and meatballs(also homemade) and Italian sausage. I paid attention only mildly I thought at the time, yet somehow I know her method of making this recipe and could probably make it with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back because i make it so often. Come to think of it now, that's probably why I remembered how to do it so well, because she did it that way, every single Christmas. She would add frozen peas to freshly boiled mostaccoli. Sometimes she would make Eggplant Parmesan. But there would also be peas with pearl onions or mushrooms. And her Strawberry/Cranberry red and white jello from the jello mold that NOBODY, including me, has ever been able to even come close to reproducing. 

    It's just a simple 2 level tract house made during the population boom in Detroit in the late 30's and 40's. But to me it's heaven on earth.