174

All I know for a long time is that my grandpa built it all by himself. The cement, rods, foundation prep, the entire tumultuous, tiresome process.

He led a gypsy life, but not in the sense one would opine. It was more of packing up and packing down, trekking, stowing, levering. Everlasting.

Until the smell of the soil made him rethink. Wondered if his teaching would need entailing his other eleven members being lugged around? Give a taste of the gravel his footfalls greeted?

Thus 174. Previously embraced by a banana grove, a meagre perimeter holding a four storied estate. The ground became a home for twelve, the rest left for strangers to pay in every two moon cycles.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough. For mom. Her six brothers, and three sisters.

The lord of the house, not towering, yet with towering intellect tread in pursuit of knowledge. London accepted him, and a medal of honour trailed him on his way home.

The grandeur to the simplicity, yet again.

The children weren’t diffident, yet weren’t warm. Only stoic respect.

Grandma basked in the room on the west, in the warmth of the sun. She is warmth itself, and would soothe her children in haughty summers and withering winters.

A pair of knitting needles and yarn were her constants, while the daughters studied and cooked and cleaned. The sons’ faces with doors closed against them, a cruelty not evaded until much later.

Only their mom would light up against the dark.

They are well now. As they may have hoped, or more.

She saw her daughters and sons wed, away from there.

The once hubbub of pens, muffled voices, tea times and sleepy huddles muted into a depthless void.

Until one day the void called the lord.

The melancholy greyed the walls. And doused grandma’s heart.

I was born by then, and another two cousins tailing me.

By the time my lips could conjure ‘grandma’ with all the honeyed tenderness, the void build an imagery of grandpa, and she saw right into it as she walked to no return.

I don’t remember how it felt. I have a photo with me in a pink polka dress with her holding me. A visual so reminiscent of mom.

The visceral realisation twists something in me. How can I feel something that was never really mine? The nostalgia? The conversations which may have had taken place? The warm hands still holding mine, telling me that it’s going to be fine?

The thought itself is bitter.

The word grandma itself is bitter, now that I see other people with theirs.

Yet 174 and I are tethered with a violet string, and uncuttable by The Fates in Hercules. It’s iridescent, more than the gilded God-like glow of the infamous Greek hero.

My cousins glow violet. My aunts and uncles glow violet. The bougainvillea glows violet and extends a friendly welcome, greeting me in a bow. She embeds herself into the brown of the spearheaded gate, and waves at me.

And I love it.