Magic!

 I originally posted this on facebook a year ago but I wanted it a bit more permanent so here it is again.


I have loved so many places but to me my grandmother's house was magic and when she moved I realized she was the one that really made that 400 year old farm house with a straw roof enchanted because the new house (only 100 years old) turned out to be just as fantastic. I loved the stained glass windows in the bathroom, they made me feel like I was looking through time into something sacred and private. I loved the smells of straw, bread in the own, wooden plank floors that felt rough under your bare feet and some times gave you a splinter, the grumpy farmers field behind the house and the cooking smells from the neighboring "home for the traveler" that would fill the night air with loud laughter and music on Saturday nights. The garden was full of wonderful trees for climbing or apple picking and the garden had flowers and vegetables growing and filling the air with joy. My grandfathers workshop was sharply and wonderfully fragrant with wood shavings and paint, and when I would sneak in there I felt as though I had entered a separate world hidden in plain sight in the middle of my oasis of childhood bliss. There were 2 sets of stairs in the house and one led straight up to the remodeled hayloft which was now a large family room with sloping walls almost to the floor, there was still a door for loading the hay in and now it simply opened up to a straight drop down to the lawn below and my older and much braver cousins would fill it up with pillows and blankets and jump out into the open, how I envied them the freedom but I was absolutely terrified of leaping out myself. The other set of stars I rarely walked up because they led to my uncles end of the house and since he was just 16 years older than my self I was usually not a welcome sight there, when he was home and awake the house was filled with the rhythms he constantly was beating into his drum set. When he was not home I would sometimes tiptoe into his room and look at his detailed drawings of shoes that he was designing the rest of his art was to uninteresting for this young art critic to catch my attention, then I might walk on to the next section of the house I was not allowed in. i was a sort of an attic full of strange dusty things i remember a butter churn and other artifacts, dusty boxes and crates and a glorious old organ that you had to constantly pump with pedal-like bellows in order to make it produce sound. This was difficult because I was to short to do this while sitting on the bench so I had to master the skill of pumping, balancing and producing horrible sounding music that I would attempt to sing along to all at once with out getting asked to stop by an adult or older cousin. This house had wonderful sounds as well, laughter. Lots and lots of jolly, sweet, enthusiastic, soul feeding laughter. And music. Singing, strumming on guitars, a banjo, a harmonica, an accordion, on occasion a violin, a saw, a comb and a number of other instruments real or not that I can't name. The sound of my grandmothers voice though, that is the most powerful magic there was within those tutor walls. When she sat down with a book the kids would flock around her and quiet and expectant and when she opened the pages and filled our imaginations with wonder and adventure they would stay full long hours after she snapped the book shut and told our objecting selves that we would have to wait, then if we were really lucky we would get to listen to her talk about the shadows on the walls and her memories from her own childhood while we lay squeezed tighter together in one little bed next to her than we would ever have put up in our own rooms, yet here in her bedroom with the old lumpy heavy blankets and the elbows and knees of my siblings i felt totally and completely happy.