As a child, my maternal grandmother was the only member of my extended family that lived within a 150 mile radius of my home in Daytona Beach, Florida. As such, I spent a good deal of time at her house. She has since moved to live closer to her other daughter in South Florida, but passing by her old house inevitably brings a jolt of recollection.
        Each room in her small house had a different feeling to it, and I loved them all individually, but the living room was my favorite. It and the spare bedroom were the only carpeted rooms, both covered in the same coarse olive green furriness. I used to look for lost things in its depths, because when I lay down on it I could feel strange hard bits buried under the bristles. I used the bright red wooden door to practice handstands; upside down I could smell the old mustiness of the carpet. Under the television in the corner sat an old decrepit record player and I�d always play the same record � the name of it is long gone from my memory but I can still see the green pickle on the album cover.
        Adjacent to the living room was the tiny kitchen, always exuding odors of tuna fish sandwiches or baked cookies. I found her array of sweets enthralling, but more because of the interesting gadgets and containers than the snacks themselves. Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies were kept in an actual cookie jar, fat and yellow with a top that clanged when the lid was put back on, and she had the first ice-cream scooper I�d ever seen, which was a very exciting change from the boring spoons we used at home. The kitchen led to the ominous �Florida room,� entered only to creep through to the carport or to grab one of the various bats and balls and toys stored in a big wooden box in the corner. Cold in winter and sweltering the other nine months of the year, the door to this room was always closed, and sometimes my grandmother would let me bring out the long tan stuffed dog to tuck under the door and keep the insufferable climate of that room isolated.
        On the other side of the house were the bathroom, my grandmother�s bedroom and the spare room. I never went into the spare room if I could help it; the room always felt dank and dim and the big dark picture of my grandmother�s dead sister who had lived in that room tickled the hairs on the back of my neck.
        The grandmotherly smell of the entire house was concentrated in the bathroom � shampoo and air freshener and a certain unidentifiable but very distinct kind of soap. My habit of finding patterns in bricks or tiles came from this room; I�d sit on the cold floor and trace mazes through the tiles, finding different ways to get from one of the dark blocks to another using only certain paths of the light green rectangles and squares.
        My grandmother�s bedroom was the antithesis of her sister�s old room � bright and shiny, all white and pink with the best pillows I�ve still ever come across. Two different hairbrushes resided on the dresser, one with hard metal bristles, and another small red plastic one that made me imagine a porcupine was rolling on my head. Her closet, too, provided hours of treasure-hunting, trying on the assortment of silky bright-patterned shirts and painting my face with the old cherry lipsticks that smelled of wax. On rainy days I�d climb up onto the chest in her room and watch the rain through the big high windows, listening to the pitter-patter of the droplets and the clacking of her little terrier�s toenails on the hard tiles as the dog would come in and out of the room, whining for someone to let her outside.