Love / Hate Relationship

Grandma Jones lived in the farmhouse where she raised three sons and two daughters with Grandpa Jones. Grandpa died when I was two years old. I was his only granddaughter at the time, many more were born after me. The farmhouse was large; two stories. You entered by the side door into a “mud” room, then up a step and to the right into the kitchen. There was a large bathroom off the kitchen. If you turned left at the entrance, there was a large dining room with a coal furnace, a record player and a treadle sewing machine. I spent hours listening to the records other people had left, including The Beatles album my biodad left. To the left was the coat closet directly across from the front door. Grandma’s closet was full of gallon containers with the spouts cut off to form large scoops. They were full to the brim with dominos, marbles, army men, etcetera. If you continued straight through the dining room, there was a living room with a piano in it and lots of knickknacks behind glass doors in cupboards. To the right of the living room were two doors. The door on the left led into Grandma’s bedroom, which was on the small side. The door to the right was a wide staircase up to the second floor.

The room at the top of the stairs was painted bright white and had a fringed chenille bedspread on it. The walls were lined with toy refrigerator, sink, cupboards, etc. There were plastic meats, vegetables, and fruit. It was a room for two little girls (my Mom and Aunt) to play at being grownup. We spent many bad weather days riding blankets and sheets down the stairs and into the door at the bottom of the staircase. I don’t remember ever getting in trouble for that activity. The upstairs room were accessible one after another, so the two in the middle had to be entered via another room. The next room was another girl’s room with a matching bedspread in a different color in it. This was the room where we napped. The next room had apparently been a boy’s bedroom at one time; however, there were no beds in it then. This was the biggest room in the house, you could easily fit six twin size beds in it. When I was a child, there were some steamer trunks lining a wall and there were loads of dress up clothes in them. In the center of the room, there sat an enormous table that took up most of the room. It was covered from one end to the other with railroad tracks, miniature trees and buildings. There were tunnels through mountains. There was a frozen lake. It was magnificent. The last room was another boy’s room. The walls were covered by pennants from various colleges. This room was dark; and it seemed the sun never shone into it. I didn’t spend much time in this room as it was uninteresting to me and more than a little creepy. There was a railing along one side of the room along one side of the narrow, dark stairway. Along the outer wall, running the length of the stairwell were bookcases. These bookcases were stuffed full of books. There were: “Nancy Drew”, “The Hardy Boys”, and “Reader’s Digest Condensed Books”. The only place I’ve ever seen more books is the library. I spent many hours sitting on the steps, in the twilight in that stairwell, reading.

I loved that stairwell and its treasure trove of books. I hated that stairwell because it was dark and creepy. I believed there was a witch who lived in the room at the top of the stairs. I believed she hid in the corner closet during the day. I had many nightmares where somehow I ended up staying too late in the stairwell and she came out and nearly got me before I woke up terrified.