Agnes Elizabeth Franks Powell Peebles  (1902-1979). She stood on the far right at my parents’ wedding–Grandma Peebles. In reality, she was my great-grandmother.

Each year I would spend time at Grandma Peebles’ house. It wasn’t a very big house. It was a rectangular house with a large front room and kitchen, a small hall with two bedrooms and a bath between them.

The kitchen was small and had a bank of cabinets along the outside wall. The sink was beneath the window. At the end of the cabinets was the exterior door. The last cabinet had a wooden cutting board that slid inside like a drawer. Grandma would pull that board out and I would sit on the stool and eat or ‘help’ while she fixed our food. The pull-out was just the right height for me, and I would beg to sit there if she made me a place at the table.

The best thing about going to Grandma’s house was the closet. You could enter the closet from the living room or from the back bedroom. It was a long, skinny closet with bookshelves full of books, record albums, boxes of photos, coats, games, old jewelry cases full of beads, clip-on earrings, watches, hairpins and hatpins, hats, and other items. By the time I was twelve, I had likely read every book on the shelves multiple times.

Grandma would take out the photos, look at each one, and tell me who was in it, along with a story about where and when it was taken. We both spent countless hours going through the jewelry boxes and trying on the clip earrings and necklaces, some dating back to the 1920s.

I loved rummaging around in the closet. There was always something new for me to find. Dress up clothes from eras gone by, pointed-toed shoes, yearbooks and old schoolbooks that had belonged to my mother with notes to and about her friends. I always knew that each item would elicit a story from Grandma.

We listened to music. The closet held record albums featuring songs like Blue Skies and Time After Time by Frank Sinatra, Bicycle Built for Two, and music by Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Linda Ronstadt. Music that would magically transform in my mind into visions of beautifully clothed ladies dancing waltzes and polkas.

She taught me to play dominoes and told me stories about my mom and aunts when they were kids. She let me read and lose myself in all kinds of books, from mysteries, romance, adventure, the classics, and many others. She would sit on the front porch and watch me while I played, swung on the rope swing, or ran down the road to the country store. We laughed and did silly things. It was a time of magic and freedom.

I remember when she died. It is the first funeral I remember attending. The cousins and I were stiff in our good clothes, and we watched our parents and grandparents grieve without understanding what was happening. Ricky and I watched our grandpa lift his mother out of her coffin while crying uncontrollably. We were scared, awed by death and its power, and sad without really knowing how to process it or the emotions it brought. Furtively, we wiped our eyes. We wanted to offer comfort but didn’t know how.

1979 might have been the end of my visits and time spent with my grandmother, but the memories we forged will always remain close to my heart.