Grandma's House

When my mother got pregnant with my sister, my family picked up and moved in with my grandparents in Pennsylvania. My dad was in the military so he wasn't able to be around as much as he'd like so it was off to grandmas house!

My grandmother made a room for me in the back bedroom and I started daycare in a small converted house across from a plant nursery. It was in the back bedroom (later converted to the computer room) that I did most of my playing and other random activities. There were two other bedrooms besides my grandparents room, the "Brass Bedroom" where my mother stayed and the"waterbed room" where my Aunt used to stay when she lived there.

My bedroom like most children's had plenty of toys, in particular a gadget connected to the end of the bed with random balls, beads, lights, and other random things that are intended to amuse small children.   One night after being told countless times to go to sleep and ignoring this I began to lean over the the end of the bed and play with this toy. I continued to play with it for several minutes as I always had and then leaned foreword further to reach something at the bottom. And that's when IT happened. I leaned to far and fell off the end of my bed, smashing my face into the plastic toy, and landing head first on the ground. Needless to say, tears and screaming ensued.

My grandmother was probably the best part of living in Pennsylvania. My mother worked at a dental office, my grandfather was a construction worker who often worked late, and my grandmother worked for the state, but as she was closer she almost always picked me up from daycare. At night she'd often sneak me out of the house to go to 3B's for ice cream or to the local Giant store for donuts. When I was sick it was always best to be taken care of by grandma. I remember getting chicken pox and being quarantined to the "tree house" are of the daycare until my grandma came to pick me up. When we got home she promptly made me a 'nest' on the couch and fed me tea, chicken noodle soup, and grandma utz chips.

When I was well, grandma always had an assortment of costumes consisting of various fancy dresses, hats, and furs that she had collected from yard sales that we would dress up in and have extravagant tea parties. Those tea parties were and still are the best part of grandma's house.