The house with cake and knitting needles
My grandmother’s place, her steady presence, and what stillness gave me as everything else sped up.
There are houses you walk into like a guest, and houses you walk into like a memory. My grandmother's house was the second kind.
She lived there with my aunt Aurora, and I never knocked. Grandkids didn't have to. You just pushed the gate open (or jumped over it, if you felt like being dramatic) and walked right in. I can still hear the sound the gate made when it closed behind me: a soft metallic clink, like punctuation. I didn't know then that it would stay with me for life.
Inside, there was always a certain rhythm. Telenovelas. Knitting needles clicking. A cake cooling.
My aunt often had rollers in her hair, getting ready for church later that evening, with her cross necklace, a swipe of lipstick, and sensible shoes. There was always a sense of occasion.
Sometimes my grandmother would be in the outside kitchen, slowly stirring a pot of guava paste. She made it the old way, with bits of guava skin still folded in, soft and sweet. It wasn't fancy. It was just something that belonged in that house, like the sound of the TV or the smell of fresh laundry my cousin who worked there would be washing.
And on top of nearly every bureau or cabinet, there were saints.
Each had their place, and my aunt and grandmother spoke to them daily, exclaiming their names when needed. Their faith was everywhere.
In the living room hung a black-and-white photo of my grandparents on their wedding day. It was formal and serious, the way old portraits used to be, and framed with the care reserved for the holy and the gone.
My grandfather died when I was six. I don't remember him well, but I knew his story. He was the town's notary, the one who registered births, signed marriage certificates, and made things official. He had an office in that very house.
When my grandmother passed away in 2013, the house was passed to me. By then, it was falling apart: the foundation shifting, the walls worn down by decades of life. In 2023, we made the hard decision to tear it down. In its place, we built something new that still holds the shape of what came before.
I kept pieces of the old house woven into the new one. The wood floors became small carved items scattered throughout the rooms. In the office, which is in the exact place my grandfather's had his, sits his old typewriter, as if he'd only just stepped away from his desk. His saxophone also rests nearby. Most importantly, I saved a piece of that iron gate, the one that made that soft metallic clink. It hangs now on the living room wall, a piece of all those entrances and exits, all those moments of coming home.
When I go home now, I see my nephew running through the rooms while my mom smiles, watching us all make this space ours. The house is different, but the life inside it continues the same story.
You can feel it in the bones of the space. The memory in the walls.
That house taught me a lot about presence. It taught me that some things don't need to change to matter. That love can look like cake and sound like knitting needles. That saints don't only live in churches. And that even when a house is gone, the life that happened inside it can still hug you. It takes generations to build a story, and I am happy to be part of it.
The Gate
I used to jump the gate It sang when I landed The metal knew me We were almost friends She moved through the rooms With thread and grace Watched Mass on tv A rosary in place Now the gate hangs inside Steel against white On the walls that once held her Now holding what’s mine The house I made from hers The hush beneath the frame Her memories behind me I gave the walls my name
✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries, one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.
Everything about this is amazing!!