Memories of Granny’s Place

As I glanced past the lit Christmas tree in the window, I could see endless rain pouring down and splashing into the large puddles that now filled the road outside my grandparents’ home. It didn’t feel like Christmas because it was such a wet day. But it made it a special memory.

I shivered a little and turned back to watch my grandmother sharpening her pencils with a razor blade and unpacking her watercolor paints and paintbrushes from their special travel box. She was wearing a loose lambs- wool cardigan that covered the top of her long, tie-dyed skirt. Her loosely tied up white hair was knotted in a swirly bun. I moved from the sofa to stand closer to her armchair and watched her rearrange the fruit bowl that she was commissioned to paint for her neighbour.

I could smell a mix of the familiar waft of her Chanel N°5 perfume and the gentle but evident odor of her watercolors, but I couldn’t pick out any fruity smells. I looked at the painting, which was nearly complete, and saw her penciled signature at the bottom. It read “EA. Shepherd” in beautiful printing. The “EA.” stood for Elisabeth Anne, although everyone called her ‘Lizzy’.

I moved back over to where I had been sitting, in front of the lightweight set of drawers that I was using as a garage for my match box cars. Before settling down to her painting, Granny had cleared out the drawers for me and helped me cut some empty food boxes out into little houses with car ports. I cradled my tip truck in my arms and hummed a tune from “Lightening McQueen.”. My dulcet tones clashed somewhat with the Christmas carols that Granny had playing on her little Blue tooth speaker. She looked up from her painting, not to tell me to stop singing, but to ask how long I thought building my street in her drawers might take. I answered that I was just on smoke and should be finished before noon, that’s if I didn’t have anymore breakdowns on the worksite. If all went to schedule I said I was planning to go outside in the sandpit.

After expressing her great relief at this news, she pushed her little painting table away from her armchair and went into the kitchen to refill her teacup.

“Would you like anything, Tyler?” she asked me.

“Hmm,” I thought for a moment. “May I please have some chocolate Quik?”

She got out the Nesquik powder and milk, fresh from the deli that morning, and began with great care to mix the powder with a fork into a little bit of milk. She always started it like this to ensure that the drink had no lumps of powder in it, and then added the rest of the milk to make it exactly as I liked it. She came back into the living room and put my drink on the coffee table for me, watching kindly as I reversed parked my favourite pink Porsche into a Tetley teabag garage. I picked up my drink to sip whilst I watched Granny work.

As I watched, my mind drifted to think of my favorite of her paintings, one she had done as a study in preparation for a scene she was commissioned to paint. It was a picture of pigs in a farmyard, and the study was only half finished, so that the piglets in it were colored and the background was not. A few months before, I had seen it and told her I liked it, so she gave it to me, and it now hung on my wall at home.

I watched closely as Granny finished the subtle coloring of the orange leaves and absentmindedly dipped her brush into her cup of tea and lifted her paint water to her mouth, realizing her mistake just before the murky liquid touched her lips. Granny laughed quietly and started to talk about the next trip that she and Papa, our grandpa, were planning to make to the Kimberleys, their favorite part of the northwest. They went quite often with the art club to which Granny belonged, as it was such a beautiful area and had many picturesque scenes to paint. I know my grandpa enjoyed the warmer weather as he had severe arthritis in both hands, and he became restive in the colder months.

Granny could see that this was perhaps not the most interesting topic for a seven-year-old, so she turned the rather one-sided conversation to their next visit to see her sister in Germany. This grabbed my attention much more, and we began to talk excitedly about exactly what she would do when they went and which ones of her collection of teddy bears I wanted her to bring. I, of course, gave her a long list of German sweets and chocolates that I hoped they might bring back with them for us.

Just as I had listed all of the necessities I could think of, Papa, Mummy, Daddy, and my brother, Brock and sister Sophie came back from shopping, soaking wet and in need of a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Granny went to top up the pot while they hurried to change into some dry clothes. Meanwhile, I packed up my little town for another day.

Today, I work as an architect. I like to think my Granny’s artistic flare rubbed off on me. Often, I sit and stare at those piglets in her painting on my wall and remember the chocolate Quik she used to make. I keep a large tin in my bottom drawer for those cold rainy days…of course stirring it only with a fork.