The Beautiful Basement
As a little
girl I loved visiting my Grandma. She had a special magical place in her house. It was a
beautiful place. It was her basement. I know most people don’t like basements.
They are cold and dark. Their shelves are filled with dust and their corners
covered in cobwebs. Bugs and spiders spiders and mice crawl along the floors. Most children are
afraid of basements. They look like dungeons with monsters lurking in the
shadows, but not my Grandma’s basement. Her basement was beautiful.
It is
true, that Grandma’s basement smelled like dirt but it was not the smell of
fresh overturned dirt like when planting a garden. This was old dirt. This dirt was from the beginning, Genesis dirt, “and God called the dry land earth” dirt.
That’s how old it was. The moment we stepped on the first squeaky stair the aroma
of ancient, stale dirt and cold concrete filled our nostrils.
The steep
stairs were aged and cracked, a little like my Grandma’s face with wrinkles and
creases. We would carefully descend down each step as if each held a land mine
about to explode. I loved how they creaked and squeaked like angry cats in a
cat fight on a night with a full moon. The hanging laundry would cast shadows
across the floor that looked like old grey ghosts. Thankfully, Grandma would
always assure me that they were just her old house dresses and Grandpa’s
slacks.
Jars of bottled apricots lined
the shelves. Row after row, jar after jar, like soldiers standing at attention
lined up for inspection. Grandma would often open a jar and we would partake of
the sensational apricot sweetness. We would lap up the apricots like puppies at
a dish full of warm milk. Sappy syrup sloppily spilt down our chins and dripped
on our noses. With the back of our hands we would clumsily wipe all the
wonderfulness and sweetness in one fail swoop from off our faces only to beg
for more.
My
favorite part of the beautiful basement was Grandma’s bed. It was big, soft, and white.
We would snuggle on that bed and Grandma would tell stories. “Life begins and
ends in a bed” she once said. As a little girl the thought intrigued me. I
pictured the bed like white fluffy clouds in heaven; one sending new baby
spirits down to earth and the other inviting an old tired spirit back home. Grandma’s
bed became my own heavenly cloud for me
and my grandmother.
When I
was in the beautiful basement with Grandma nothing else mattered. We had no
idea what was happening on the other side of the old, worn out, blue door at
the top of the stairs.
The house could have been violently swept away by a
tornado, tossed and turned and dropped in the Land of Oz and we
would never have known. I wouldn’t have cared. My Grandma was beautiful. Time
with my Grandma was beautiful and that is why the basement is beautiful.
