I took the bus to visit my grandma on Tuesday.
The bus was easy enough. It ended up being such a nice night I decided to walk the 2 miles back home though.
It felt really nice to walk through her neighborhood. When I was a teenager I used to ride my bike from my mom's to their house, and all around all the neighborhoods in-between. Since I got my license and a car I always just drive directly there. It was really nice to take my time and enjoy a nice walk, 20-ish years later. See what's changed and what is the same. It was really nice to get some time alone with my thoughts too- that's becoming harder and harder to come by lately.
It was really nice to see my grandma. The house is the same as it's always been, and it was really noticable how comfortable I felt there. There were a handful of Easter decorations on the mantle, the family portraits hanging. Enough decorations that it did t feel sparse or sterile, and that's it.
A source of strife I've had over the past few years is that when my wife and I first bought our house, we didn't have a whole lot of decorations or pictures or art. We started slowly accumulating those things over time, until several years ago I felt like we had enough. My wife disagrees, and is constantly being home more and more random junk from goodwill. She feels the need to stuff every square inch of wall space with some picture or art piece, with to s of ornate frames in different colors. Buying more pieces of furniture to display all sorts of "vintage" glassware that she buys and we never use because it's not dishwasher safe (and probably toxic), and all sorts of figurines and trinkets and rocks. There's only a few spaces left in my house where I don't feel overwhelmed. Not to mention the money spent on all this stuff. There's never any cohesive plan or intention to it, just retail therapy and impulse buying.
So it was really refreshing to be in my grandparent's house, which was so intentional and calming. It had blank space that made the decorations feel so much more meaningful. This visit has made me realize that I need to talk to my wife and carve out some space for myself in the house. Or rather, I need to get my own shit together and clean up my own clutter- tons of cables and pieces of half-finished projects are making my own spaces uncomfortable. I need to take some vacation time and do that.
My grandmother, despite our age difference, respects me as an adult. She was kind of lost and asked me how she should handle my grandfather being in the hospital, and I gave what wisdom I could. It feels good to be an independent adult. I have a bad knee and started walking with a cane last year, so it was really good to know I can still walk a couple miles. I was sore, but it's feasible. I want to do it again- hopefully when my grandfather is back home too.