Perfect House

My grandmother lives in a perfect house.
Not a house that makes you feel stiff or inadequate or poor, but one that makes you want to better yourself in the right kind of ways. 

At my house, if my son spills something on the floor, I roll my eyes and leave it there for a day when I am less tired.  But at Nana's, when he dumps potpourri all over the carpet, I cannot leave it.  I am compelled to pick it up, piece by piece, and then vacuum over it, and then vacuum over the mismatched vacuum lines on the floor.  She begs me to leave it until Monday, "When Nell comes," but that wouldn't be right - not at Nana's house.

Things are prissy at Nana's house, but not rude.  She has a sitting room filled with tiny teacups and pictures of trees and rivers that I liked to look at when I studied there in middle school.  The room has a hush about it, reminding you that some things are meant to be sacred.  But it is a kind hush that beckons my 19 month in and urges him to lift dainty china to his lips in uncharacteristically mannerly play.

At Nana's house, everything has a place - and at one point in time, I knew about every thing and every place.  I would roam through the cabinets and the closets and the button jars and the drawers while she teased me about being a snoop and warned me about dinner parties where hosts filled bathroom cabinets with marbles to trap unsuspecting, nosey guests.  I would laugh at her warning and move on to the next cabinet, soaking up the same sort of comfort I got when reading Little Women or The Boxcar Children.

Food tastes better in this perfect house than it does anywhere else.  Even fruitcake, which somehow tastes like candied tar everywhere else, comes out soft and second-tempting.  Traveling salesmen, army boys meant to be "surviving in the wilderness" from Fort Stewart, dogs, wild cats, hungry grandchildren, and then hungry grandchildren's spouses, have all been in on this secret --- showing up hat in hand or purr in throat at just the right time.

At Nana's house - we talk about the best part of our day, not the worst.  Everything feels better there.  And we always leave better than we came.

It is a perfect house.