Humble Beginnings

From humble beginnings to a mediocre rise. My grandmother using rubber bands and hair ties to lock up the coffee in an unsealed pouch, not so we couldn't drink it, but so we wouldn't want it out.

The pipes that held the water frozen to the outside of her house, bound with bailing wire and old cloth. I don't know if they smelled, but they were the colour of her dirt, which was red and tar, much like the house that rested upon it.

Her head was curled in stoney white gauze that whisped like her dresses, or were they gowns?

She remembered my name from time to time and she remembered to shuffle while she stepped. At my age both seemed ineffective and discomforting.

Not much has changed.