At Grandma's Place

My grandma’s place on Chicago's East Side was my favorite place to be as a child. It was a place where I felt special. Fat pink and vanilla -colored Christmas tree lights at Christmastime. Space heater in the livingroom. Rough dark green upholstered sofa bed with a multi-colored crocheted afghan thrown over the back of it. Leaf-patterned carpet over brown linoleum floors. Big back porch with its peeling gray paint where we watched thunderstorms while eating ice cream slices from Walgreen’s pint-sized containers. Bright yellow kitchen walls with a chrome-trimmed kitchen table with its swirly-gray and white formica top. The refrigerator was called the “ice box” and there was a white and chrome convection oven that I never saw my grandma use, with it’s big red dial sticking out of the side of it like clown’s fake nose. It was a warm and friendly place, a place where I could relax and be free to do what I liked to do, which was to draw and make things with construction paper and sticky paste from a jar. I lay at night on what Grandma called "the davenport" and watched the lights from passing cars filter through the Venetian blinds and slide across the ceiling over and over until I fell sound asleep. I miss my Grandma so much.