Pulling into the driveway I would kick open the car door with the side of my foot, hurl my lanky legs out off the leather seat where they were sticking, push the rest of myself out of the car and slam the door shut. I would walk around front of the car with Mom yelling out the window “Don’t slam the door so hard!” Walking towards the house, the yellow gravel that covered the driveway would always get stuck between my flip-flops and my feet.
During the summer it was easier to enter my Grandparent’s house by using the wooden wheelchair ramp. Walking up the ramp I would stub my toe and laugh knowing that it would match my other swollen toe from being there the day before. I couldn’t run my hand over the top of the railing of the ramp because I would undoubtedly get a splinter from the peeled red paint that matched the peeling paint of the house. While walking back and forth up the ramp I would feel as though I was making my way through a line up at Disney World.
Under the peeled paint you could see that the wood of the house was a grayish, silvery color, similar to barns you sometimes see on road trips that look like they’ve been abandoned for years and years. The metal house numbers that now hang in my bedroom were corroding from rust, matching their mailbox.
Finally getting to the top of the ramp I would see my grandmother in her wheelchair sitting behind the screen door watching kids playing in the field. I would swing the screen door open, bend down and give her a quick hug and kiss. Heading down the hallway I would give Grandpa, who would always be sitting in his Lazy Boy watching Matlock, a big wave and head towards him for his quick hug and kiss. Bending down to give him his hug he would always swiftly slip a loonie or toonie into my hand and wink at me. I would smile and head into the kitchen. The kitchen just had barely enough room for a table and a fridge. The kitchen table, which now sits in my apartment, would be covered from end to end with pictures of the family and covering it was a thick, clear plastic table cloth which had small black holes from Grandma dropping her cigarette on it.
Once in the kitchen, I would head over to the cupboard and grab myself a strawberry flakey pastry. Heading back into the living room, which was plastered in floral wall paper that was turning yellow due to the cigarette smoke, I would lay down onto the couch. There was only one couch in the living room and it was so hard that even when you sat on it, it didn’t budge. The fabric of the couch was black with brown flowers and the texture was similar to a cat’s scratching post. The couch was propped up off the ground with large apple juice cans where the legs used to be. By the time Matlock was over, the couch and I would be covered in bits of flakey pastry. Laying there, all I could hear were kids carrying on outside and Grandma laughing to herself.
