PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

When I think of my grandparents, I imagine them sitting in their dining room and talking about their day. Every day, almost without fail, when I was visiting my grandparents, we would sit down, drink coffee and eat bread at almost exactly 6 o’clock. My grandfather would make the coffee while I sat with my grandmother. They had a coffee maker that is old enough that makes me wonder how it is still working but not old enough to be considered trash and thrown out. When the coffee was ready my grandfather would sit and eat plain white bread with strawberry jelly. He liked to drink coffee with milk and a little bit of sugar. My grandmother, on the other hand, would just drink plain black coffee. She was always trying to cut down sugar. I liked to eat sweet bread and coffee with a lot milk. Without fail, they would always have a basket of fresh bread in the middle of their dining table, wrapped with a cloth so it would stay warm. They used to buy the bread from a bakery two blocks away. If you happened to walk in front of it while they were baking, it smelled like heaven. My grandmother would always make us use her old cups even though she had like a million of new ones in her cabinets. When I was younger I loved to take them out and play with them and my grandmother would get angry at me. I didn’t understand then but now that I’m older I realized that they were probably really expensive. She had gotten them piece by piece in all her trips to the United States when she was younger and some were gifts. They probably had a sentimental value to them. Thankfully I never broke one. Now I understand that her cool dishware was for displaying and her normal stuff was for everyone to use. My grandmother also used to have a shelf of neatly folded handkerchiefs, towels and other cloths that belonged to her parents. They all where embroidered by my great-grandmother with flowers, butterflies and other things she liked. My grandmother liked to take them out and show them to me. Our favorite was a tablecloth with a hundred sunflowers along the edges. When I saw it, I imagined my great-grandma sitting on her favorite chair, working on it for hours until she proudly showed it to her children and husband. The tablecloth was old but since it was made of a very thick fabric, it didn’t look worn out. Sometimes my grandmother would use it on the dining table and make the dining room a little bit like a sunflower field.