Grandad's House

The Dolls' Great-Grandad (Mama's Grandad) shall be returning home next week after his month spent in the hospice due to illness. Today, Mama and her Baby Sister went round to help our Mum and Dad with tidying up Grandad's house.

Mama loves that house; my sister and I spent a large part of our childhood there and almost every ornament, photograph, book, cup and saucer are still in the same place as they were twenty years ago; Grandad hasn't really changed anything (hence the need for a little bit of tidying up!).

This afternoon, my little sister and I picked up old trinkets and opened cupboards and boxes containing memories of our childhood. We sat at our old places at the tiny kitchen table and ended up in floods of tears remembering dinner times with our dear, dear late Grandma whose make-up drawer next to the sink is still full of her old scarves and lipsticks...thirteen years later.

Upstairs the little bedroom still contains my mother's toys, including a dolls' house and the twin dolls Lynn and Lynda in their antique pram; their broken, glazed eyes making them rather an eerie sight now.

In the kitchen, Grandma's recipes remain sello-taped to the insides of the cupboard doors; written out in her own hand on faded pieces of paper. I have taken copies of some of them, whereas others shall be forever etched in my mind from the memories of Grandma and me baking together.

Whenever I bake cakes with Lucy and Izzy, I remember Grandma and a young Mama, in the kitchen, together...