And They Gathered To Watch The Children Play

When I was little (no, even smaller), I stayed with my great-grandmother, Mamaw Morale (Mo-rah-lee), her sister, my great-great-aunt Mattia, and my great-aunt, Betty (stage name Yolanda LaMarr).

The house always smelled like pasta, and the doorknobs of the old house looked like big diamonds. The ceiling tiles had glittery specks in it that I would try to count when trying to relax into nap-time. And Aunt Mattia cussed in Italian. A lot.

They lived in a two-story house, with my Aunt Betty living upstairs with her husband, my  Uncle Tommy, and their dog, Duke. There was a rusted metal staircase that went up from the back patio, where they would sometimes sit and play games.

And there were those metal chairs that we didn’t dare sit on in the summer.

They were light blue.