Eventually, something would interrupt the welcoming flow of conversation between my parents and grandparents under the grape arbor—younger children squabbling or someone needing attention. The stories were over. For now.
Now it was time to slip inside unnoticed and alone. Once we had passed through the grape vines and the delicious tangle of reminiscence, when we were ready, we could enter the house.
I had a ritual when I entered Grandma’s house. I think we all did. Each may have differed slightly, but each was a routine that bordered on sacrament.
Inside the back door a small landing stood midway between the main floor and the basement. It was an immediate crossroads. I could go straight ahead and down the cool, dark, thinly-carpeted basement stairs, or up the half flight of steps to the left leading through a small, bright entryway to the kitchen. Up I went. (I always saved the basement for last.)
Immediately, I would soak in the bold contrast of fresh white walls and black trim work—baseboards, windowsills, banisters. A black wooden rocking chair painted in bright red, yellow, and blue flowers with fresh green vines welcomed me from the corner of the entry way. At its feet, a braided rug in blues and grays. Across from it was a china cabinet full of glassware and figures of children from around the world. Sun streamed in the windows overlooking the grape arbor.
The kitchen was surprisingly practical and plain. Still black and white. A stained-glass bread box sat on the kitchen table. There was always a thrill in noticing on a decorative shelf a gift I had purchased for Grandma at a craft fair—a round wooden bowl painted bright yellow and covered in rosemaling in brilliant reds, blues, and greens. It had a red ball as a lid, and the bottom of the lid and the top of the bowl fit together in a scalloped pattern. Best of all, was the tiny toy kitchen in the corner. It would have been the perfect size for a large doll; it was really too small even for a toddler. But its brightly painted tin cabinets and dishes were so inviting that I stooped to linger among them long after I stopped playing with toys.
From the kitchen, I would pass into the inner sanctuary—the dining room and living room. It was here that I learned and practiced reverence.
The dining room was first. On the round central table and the long, beautifully carved cabinet, elaborate dried flower arrangements and sweeping peacock feathers mingled in a large pewter tankard, intricately engraved with flowers—the only piece that Grandma was able to purchase when my grandparents attended the auction of the belongings of the town doctor, the previous owner of the home. Beside the tankard, the peacock feathers nearly tickling his ears, posed a silk-pantalooned Puss in Boots, his brown leather boots buckled beautifully and his white fur exquisite. An antique organ covered in old sheet music and Victorian greeting cards depicting children at play filled the wall adjoining the kitchen. Above it hung a large, framed photo of my mother when she was eight or nine with gloriously long hair, hanging glossy and golden against her white dress. Against the far wall, under the front windows, were piled stacks of antique children’s books.
In the living room, an elegant pink satin Victorian sofa. A deep, snow-white polar bear rug in front of the red-brick open fireplace. A baby grand, open and inviting, silver music boxes and antique dolls gathered in profusion beneath it. Between two sets of shelves hid pocket doors that could close the living room and dining room off. On the shelves, behind their beautiful cut glass doors, were figures of children—playing dancing, reading. A lamp with beaded tassels, delicious to finger.
I would visit these lovely objects in rapturous silence, breathing in the heady perfume of dried roses, old books, aged fabrics, smoke-laced fur, ivory keys, sun-warmed wood.
Grandma surrounded herself in beauty—sometimes the simple beauty of tiger lilies along her picket fence or the glowing grape arbor under the summer sun, sometimes the expensive, rare, collectible beauty of her living room and dining room. But, as far as I could tell, she did so in every case without avarice. She assembled museum-worthy collections with the abandon of a child gathering wildflowers in a field, glorying in each new bloom, delighting in the abundance of stalks growing thick in her hands, marveling in the ability to select a bouquet just suited to her taste.
Rachel Brown
enjoys sipping tea, savoring good books, and spending time outside.
She is daily inspired to live more deeply and love more fully by her husband and two children.
One Response
Yes we did all have a ritual! =D Mine involved that soft white fur rug and visiting with specific dolls in the livingroom, the silver music box and the sunroom. Eventually every room in the house.