Old Lace and Roses Tea Room

[my room is clean and dark and my star curtain is ruffling at the vibration of the rain.]

i miss my grandmother's house. it was always just like that.

dark, smelling of mothballs, and dry, and soft allover. even the stair. the carpet was thick and brown and it would creak in select spots. the studio room had yellow curtains with small windows, and there were precise tools for scraping clay. a tall white manequin, naked, stood there beside the collages of the peanuts gang, winnie the pooh, and a scary animate TV with eyes. man, were those walls scary.

the whole place was infested with interesting things. all vintage. and there is a frightening toy from germany that makes this whirring nightmarish noise. it's a spin top that lights up and does awful whirring.

i never realized how much i have always wanted to capture the essence of that house. the piano room is most memorable though.

you said it "seems like a perfect vintage setting for a movie".

now i just recall more.

yellow green shiny velvet wallpaper. two glass cases in the corners with miniatures and dinnerware from across the globe and other travels. a dying piano where most of its fellow limbs have been amputated - keys that don't work and keys that half-work. thin crepe-like curtains covering a tall window where i can see the cracked, long driveway.

and a christmas tree. that never leaves, in the living room. the couch in there is surrounded by photos of me and weddings and us as babies. old portraits of french parents from the 1800s. that couch is the same as the wallpaper on all four squares of the piano room. some refuge it is.

i know how we'd run through the french doors in the kitchen and through the ones extending the office to our favorite place, and we'd jab at the piano; we'd gaze into the golden mirror right when we entered, we'd hear stories about how so-and-so survived the depression during the old war by living in a dainty apartment with white shutters and not buy sugar and only have a small supply of unwanted groceries.

we used to venture there for long hours, exchanging cheese cake and the latest irregular bowl glazed with marbles from art class. i liked the word "bake". and we'd run around and dig through medicine cabinets, and take looks at gradma's jewerly now and then. she always smelled of chantilly and cert's. she'd give us mints from her dusty wallet often. it was one of those beaded coin purses that you snapped shut with two interchanging pearls.

within all the reminicing, while i was on the phone on my back porch, i found myself digging a little river in the grooves of the cement with a broken match stick, the red-tipped end. and i recalled how i used to dig rivers in my garden with shovels and pour water in them, have a tea party in cardboard boxes and bring toys along.

every little kid wants to be God.