My Favorite Place

         I never could figure out what I love most about my Grandma Nana’s house. Maybe it’s the antiquity, the sense of familiarity, the history behind it, or the memories that envelop me. Wandering through every room, scavenging through every drawer, flipping through every photo album brings me back to a much simpler time. I recall the days when I was shroud in security and shielded from the complexity of youth. Where death was just a word, secrets were withheld, everyone used indoor voices, and tears were shed at a scraped knee or absence of a juice box. Growing up sure has given me a newfound appreciation of Nana’s house. 

It’s all the little things that make it so special, all the memories behind it. It’s the only place where we all sit at the dining room table. Instead of sitting in the insufferable silence I now have grown accustomed to, we talked and laughed and smiled. Being in that dining room brings back so many memories; “finding” the matzah, wearing a yamaka at the table, just because I was daddy’s little girl and wanted to belong or pretending like I had table manners. No one really minded though because I was a child with irresistible dimples. I liked seeing the oil painting of my great-great grandfather above the head of the table, grandpa. Seeing my roots, my heritage, where I come from  is something I don’t take lightly. Seeing the stain glass window reminds me of summer adventures. It’s where I learned to ride a tricycle, got my training wheels and learned to ride a bicycle. It’s where I chased Peter the rabbit around, trying to catch him and played with Bernie, the best poodle I’ve ever known. I remember board games at the dining room table. Once too young for scrabble, I played dog Monopoly, but finally around seven, I was allowed to play scrabble and despite the two hour long playing field and the tough competition, I always won. Then, there were the charms from Rwanda and worry dolls from Guatemala that hung on the light switch. I couldn’t forget the days my cousin’s became a part of our family. Even though I was nine when Wynne was adopted, I still upheld that childish naivety. I kept asking my dad why she looked different from me, how we could be family, but have a different skin color. Despite my persistent questioning, I was completely in love with her. Her chubby cheeks, gleeful smile, and soulful eyes were enough to captivate me. The next year when Theo was adopted, I didn’t notice that he wasn’t biologically related to me, he was my cousin.  Then again, four years later, Moses and Beatrice joined our family from Rwanda. This was a rather new experience for me. They were abused, neglected and starved and when I saw them, they were instinctively afraid of me. I couldn’t possibly empathize, they were under two years old and they were trembling and wailing with fear. I tried to sit near them, had my puppy sit with me, and they became hysteric. I didn’t know that their orphanage was attacked by rabid dogs, how could I have known? They were so fragile, so weak, so vulnerable. Finally, Moses let me sit in the same room as hi, and it was the closest I had ever felt to anyone. He couldn’t understand me and he didn’t really know me, but he trusted me, trusted that I loved him already and that I would never hurt him. All of these memories lay in this house. 

        I recall falling asleep on a map waiting for my mom to deliver my  sister and having Easter egg hunts or setting up the Christmas tree, yes I know that I’m Jewish. Nevertheless, they were the good old days, when religion had no meaning and it was not determined for me. It’s where I learned to “play” piano, or just bang loudly on the keys to a beat in my head, where I laid on the hammock with my Nana until one day it collapsed onto the moss,  where the New Jersey tooth fairy evolved. It’s where I held my first fashion show to the runway music and learned to prepare Arthur mac n’ cheese, where I saw my grandma beat breast cancer. Every time I see that New York Times Article framed on the wall, I smile because she survived to tell her story. She survived to create all of these incredible memories with me in that very house that I love so dearly.