A Descriptive Sketch

This week for Declamation (AKA Speech), we had impromptu speaking and impromptu selection. I didn't know if Dr. Stokes would assign a topic on the spot, or say 'Talk about whatever you want,' so, in preparation, I wrote a description of my grandmother's old house. This is the finished product.

“Grandma’s House.” Those words usually bring to mind all sorts of images and smells, like cookies in the oven, bright, cheery rooms, a warm cat in front of a crackling fire. Not for me. Honestly, my grandmother’s house always gave me the creeps. I was never comfortable alone, except for in her bedroom. The old beach cottage was falling apart, and had all the associated signs. Because the roof leaked and the basement always flooded because of a two foot hole in a bearing wall, “Musty” was the house’s perfume of choice. Lighting was poor at night, and dirt perpetually appeared, keeping me employed. Dozens of carved statues from Indonesia studded the huge shelves, nooks and crannies, and added to the eerie atmosphere; men farming, women posing, animals and plants, gods and demons, all somehow reminiscent of the White Witch’s castle.
Yet for all of the gloom, everywhere were talismans to ward it off. Sun catchers bathed Grandma’s bedroom in rainbows during the day, and some nights I played with the Tiny People, little figures of wood barely an inch tall with painted faces and clothes of colored floss. Grandma didn’t bake cookies anymore, but she always had a jar of them. The mantel was filled with family pictures, and many nights I sat under their protection on the footstool my grandfather had loved, watching “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” with Grandma. She sometimes knit, but my job was always to keep the incense burning. No amount of leaking could stink the place up once the sandalwood sticks were lit. And there were treasures, too. Few people have seen the ivory chess set from China, the silk shawl from Italy, or the jewels in the cases. But I have. The toys were kept in Dad’s old bedroom, but so were the boxes of extra carvings that didn’t have a place on the shelves, and a wooden pillar of fire kept watch over all. But if these leering faces were braved, the pilgrim was rewarded with a viewing of the brilliantly colored tapestry that was straight from a story in Arabian Nights. A beautiful princess in white rode with a powerful sheik who obviously just rescued her from the imposing palace, and his friends watched warily for followers as they raced through a night lit by millions of stars. After I was a little older, I found another treasure in that room. In a dark corner behind the portable suit closet hung a small picture of my mother, before she was able to be my mother. Untouched by the sun, she stayed there, a beautiful girl of eighteen, laughing at the darkness around her. Somehow my father had forgotten this picture, but recently he rescued her from the dungeon and carried her away to his palace.
But all of the dark and gloom is past now. A new day has dawned, and that house of decay no longer exists. After forty years in the desert, we packed Grandma up, and my uncle and aunt had the house demolished. Grandma used the steam shovel to take the first swing at the crooked kitchen window she’d hated for decades. Now a new house stands, and all three live there together, where no roof leaks, no basement is filled with mud, and darkness does not hold sway. Slowly, everything is reappearing, even the Indonesian demons; but I laugh at them now, since their hour, when darkness reigns, is past. All things have been made new.

From this, you may infer that I did not like my Grandma's house. In retrospect, I guess that's kind of true. I didn't really like the HOUSE. But because of who lived in that house, and all the hundreds of happy memories I have there, all these things sanctified it, so to speak. I think the only times I hated it was when I was there alone, because it was so still, and I guess I expected something to come to life and get me. I never knew these things about me until I started writing, though, and these are the impressions that flowed out.