This is the road to my grandma’s house.
Things were a little different over there. It was missing things I was used to at home—but I didn’t mind. We got to visit Grandma and it felt like we were playing house.
Instead of a faucet, there was a hand pump in the kitchen.
She’d ask me to turn the oven up, and instead of a dial, she’d hand me a log to throw onto the cookstove fire.
And if I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, she gave me a dish with a lid on it. I remember staring at it, flummoxed—what exactly was I supposed to do with that?
I remember lying on the floor near the warm stove, staring at the pattern in the linoleum. Were they daisies—or maybe little stars?
Once, I begged for more fish sticks but couldn’t finish them. Without a word, she scraped my plate into the slop bucket. I buried my head in her skirt, so ashamed—I’d promised I could finish them, hadn’t I? But all I got was a warm hug.
This is my last memory of her at the house.
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It’s been almost fifty years since I’ve been back here. Back to this house.
There is her stove.
There is that old hand pump.
There is her sewing machine.
Her things are still here, but she is still gone.
When I was a child, the house was spotless. Now, there’s spots everywhere. Flies crawl over the things she left behind. The curtains she made hang in shreds across her prized picture window, even now it’s the perfect spot to watch the sunset spin its golden light across the living room.
But somehow, the house itself still feels alive. Like it’s been sitting in silence all this time, quietly waiting for me to return. Waiting for me to throw another log in the cookstove fire and come for a visit to Grandma’s.
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All photography | Montana Scheff
Shot on location | Grandma’s house, Mahnomen MN
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