At Grandma's Place
D. Bowden 2005
Photo by B. Pressley

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. Leaf-patterned carpet over brown linoleum floors. Big back porch where we watched thunderstorms while eating ice cream slices from Walgreen’s pint containers. Bright yellow kitchen with a chrome-trimmed kitchen table with its gray formica top. The refrigerator was called the “ice box” and there was a convection oven that I never saw my grandma use with it’s big red dial sticking out like a clown’s nose. It was a warm and friendly place, a place 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 the Davenport and watched the light from passing cars filter through the Venetian blinds and dance across the ceiling until I fell sound asleep. I miss my Grandma so much.