Two Paragraphs

At my grandmother’s house, happiness fills the air. The rooms are large and bright and filled with beautiful old furniture and other priceless decorations. You can hear good stories in the living room and eat tasty food in the kitchen. It is a place where we laugh and joke and have fun, but also where we’ve learned many important lessons. I have made so many wonderful memories at her house, and even though she’s gone now, those memories will stay with me forever.

My grandmother hums Ella Fitzgerald while she cleans. She sashays with her feather duster around the living room, curtsying at the knotty pine tables and plumping the cushions of the stuffed-back chairs. It’s warm in there, and bright, and in the summers we’d lower the shades against the heat and tell family stories, sometimes in dropped voices that made you lean in to listen. This was where I first heard the words paramour and tipsy, but also jurisprudence and civil rights, all in relation to our own hard-loving family. We lived with passion in that place, more passion there than anywhere, and still I wonder if—now that grandma’s gone and the house is sold—we’ll ever get that lifeblood back.