My grandpa on my father’s side seemed too busy to talk to children
Stern too, though with having had nine children, perhaps a necessary trait
But grandma, she was sweet and warm, like the cookies she would bake
Upon that giant, porcelain white stove that half way filled her kitchen

A wondrous thing, that stove, with kerosine to feed its many fires
And the odors of that place, what a mix that was, I remember to this day
Kerosine, bakers’ yeast, fresh baked bread, cookies baking
All on the musty background odor from the root cellar down below

I remember too the large oak table that sat twelve or more for supper
The wind up wall clock with octagonal face and shiny pendulum of brass
The living room that, unlike in city homes, had two front doors side by side
That opened on a broad front porch with swing and slat back hickory chairs

But then grandpa died and I learned the purpose of the two front doors
For half the living room became a parlor for the placement of his coffin
The other half for talk as a line of mourners came in one door, out the other
The stern old man had died but now the house took on his sternness

Grandma lived for ten more years perhaps, but I remember little of that time
I think she found her freedom late in life, nine kids raised, husband gone
Time to visit all those kids, some near, some not so far, and others far away
But then, gradually, day by day she lost all but her oldest memories

Senile was the word back then, and she lost the sweetness that I knew
She’d curse in German and bemoaned dead children I never knew she had
That stern man she must have loved for many years, she cursed him too
And finally grandma died to take her place in a coffin in that parlor