Nana's House

I got my assignment done yesterday, because I rock. {buffing fingernails} Back to regularly scheduled work.

On Sunday we're heading out to go spend a week with my dad in Sacramento. He hasn't seen Child in a while, and I haven't been back to Sac since we moved to Montana, so we're going to get in some quality grandparent time.

This made me think of my own grandparents, and how I loved going there when I was a kid. As an exercise for myself, I wrote this little bit this morning describing what it was like to wake up there. Well, starting to describe. I have an inkling that this might be the beginning of that short story I was talking about the other day. In any case, here's what I came up with this morning:

From Nana's House, copyright 2007 by Susan Adrian

The bed is warm, and snuggly if I don't move too much. When I try to roll over the 30-year-old springs creak and poke at me, protesting. So I stay here, on my back, staring at the saggy lump that is my brother in the top bunk. I hope the bed holds, that he doesn't come crashing down on me, but I figure there's no reason it should break right now. Except it would make an interesting story.

The grown-ups are moving out in the family room, talking, making more and more noise. They always do that when they think we've slept enough, and they're getting impatient for their breakfast. If I don't get up soon they'll start to make comments about it. "My goodness, are they ever going to get up?" "I don't think you ever slept this late when you were their age." My grandmother wakes up at 4 or 5, so by 8 she feels like she's been up for a whole day already. That's what my dad says.

Actually it's just me they want. My brother is 14 now, so for some reason he's allowed to sleep through breakfast; he's a teenager. He'll emerge, with rumpled hair and marks on his face, in a couple of hours, yawning. They still wait breakfast for me.

I sigh and push back the blanket—the electric kind, yellow with a shiny strip at the top—and swing my feet onto the floor. It's cold. It's hard tile, gray-black, and it always feels cold in the morning, even in summer. I hop to the rug and just stand there for a minute, blinking. A little light filters in around the edges of the shade, but mostly it's dark, that brown-dark that tells you it's really daytime even if you're trying to sleep. The room smells of dust and chalk, and old books, but I like it. That's just how a grandparent's house should smell.

{end snip}

Medieval Word of the Day: knapscall: Some kind of helmet or headpiece; generally worn by persons of inferior rank; perhaps originally by the servants of the men-at-arms.