Day Eleven: Size Matters (In Sentences): Today’s Prompt: Where did you live when you were 12 years old?

I go back to the house where my sister and I grew up almost every Christmas. It is a drive-by visit. Now the house appears shabby and run down, but for me growing up, it seemed huge. It was just about the only two story house in the neighborhood. The others were squat, single-story houses. Especially the one next to ours on the right. This was not a proper house but a garage that had been made into a house. Everyone who has ever lived in that house has been short so we called it the “short people house.”

The house on the left hand side was built during the post World War II building boom and has only two tiny bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. That is it. It would fit in the first floor of my house.

My father and brother grew up in this house. There is a picture of my father as a little boy wearing a full suit and standing next to his father (my grandfather) in front of the porch. There is also a story about how he made my grandfather very angry. He was left alone for a few days — maybe it was the summer time or maybe he was home on leave from the air force. He decided to surprise my grandparents by painting the brick work lining the driveway white. He thought the bricks looked nice painted that way on a neighbor’s house. When my grandpa Mickey got home, he yelled at my dad for doing this. “Now every time it rains, I am gonna have to wash off the mud!” and “Two years from now, I am going to have to paint them white again.” I wonder how my father felt moving back into this house full of memories.

When we moved into the house, I was amazed by the grass in the front. Smooth and even and short. My grandpa had been the grounds keeper for one of the best golf courses in Cincinnati. He seeded that lawn. He rolled it with a huge, metal roller, pressing out any bumps or unevenness. He watered it with an oscillating sprinkler. One really hot summer day, he let us run through the sprinkler on the front grass. But only barefoot. Then he checked the grass and smoothed out the divots.

My grandmother Ora loved roses. She ordered my grandpa to build her an arbor. She made him plant roses and then grew red roses along that arbor. When her roses bloomed, cars would slow down and stop to admire them, covered with buds and blossoms and scenting the air. Once she let us cut some roses for vases inside the houses. I thought my vase of roses was beautiful and set it outside. I said, “Look, everyone is slowing down to see my bouquet.” Her short reply was, “Nonsense. What is that next to those rose bushes?”

The front porch of the house had a two seat-glider and chairs. It also had roll-down screen on either end. We really only used the screen on the left side to block the setting sun. The glider was a novelty. My sister and I had never seen such a thing and would sit on it with our grandma. She pushed it back and forth since our legs were too short to touch the ground.

When we went in the front door, we stepped immediately into the living room/dining room. This was just a single huge room. It was divided into two separate rooms by my grandpa’s huge easy chair. The black rotary phone sat on a table to the right. The dining room half had a huge formal dining table with eight chairs. The table was covered by a table cloth my grandmother had crocheted. When I first saw the table, I thought it was huge. I have the crochet table cloth and now I know that the table really was not that gigantic.

Leading off the living room to the right was a short hall way to the only bathroom and the master bedroom. Leading off the back of the dining room to the right was the kitchen. On the other side was a door opening to the staircase which turned sharply and snaked up the back of the house to the second floor. The second floor had two bedrooms. You had to walk through one room to get to the other. Later when my mom sold the house, these two rooms only counted as one bedroom because they did not have separate entrances. This also meant my mom got less than she hoped when she sold the house after she retired.

Growing up I always felt a little proud to live in the large house. But it was nothing compared to the house where my husband grew up with its eight huge bedrooms and three full stories.