Immortality

Grandma's House

I loved to stay at Memo’s house, especially in the summer. She had this tiny house with a long kitchen/dining-room area that led into the little living room. Off to the side was a short hallway accessing a bathroom and two bedrooms. That was it—five rooms in all, but to a little girl with imagination and dreams, it was a castle made for a princess. Grandma and Grandpa treated all of us kids (me, my four brothers and sister, and my nine cousins) like we were each special, in our own way. Memo would let us stay up late when we spent the night with her. She’d teach us how to make fried-green-tomato-and-ketchup sandwiches, and we’d all sit on her little couch with her and watch The Jack Parr Show (that was before Johnnie Carson). She didn’t have air conditioning—no one did back then. But she had this huge box-fan set into the window of the bedroom which the grandkids used. The hum of that fan, the softness of the old feather-bed, and the love of my grandma lulled me to sleep many a hot summer night. I can still hear that fan sometimes, late at night, and a peace comes over me as if I were that little girl again. It’s those times I can feel her presence and know she is watching out for me.

Christmas at Grandma’s -- 1948

That’s Grandma on this end of the table.
I’m the kid in the highchair next to all those electrical plugs!!