My Aunt Pauline | Teen Ink

My Aunt Pauline

November 15, 2011
By Alison055 BRONZE, Morristown, New Jersey
Alison055 BRONZE, Morristown, New Jersey
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

There is a house. It sits on top of a hill. Old and worn like the woman that lives in it. The house yearns for life: parties, people. The only activity that this house sees is the constant family coming to see how there old Aunt Pauline is doing. The house is a long ranch; with ugly brown vinyl siding that lines the exterior of the house. The front door sits like a grand king on his throne. The door sits perched up on top of eight lime stone stairs. Open this door there is a women Pauline. She sits in her favorite lazy boy recliner in the middle of her mud room. Once in a while she will get up from her chair and go to her garden.



The Garden looks like it was taken from a witch’s house. The garden is placed in front of her house cascading down a hill. It’s ugly, with dead rose bushes and brown crunchy grass. The only nice part of the garden is the vine arbor that sits in the middle of the garden. When ever the old woman walks through the garden she thinks of old happy times, memories that are long gone. Like when her and her husband built the garden together. The pain that she feels when she walks through the garden sends her immediately back the house.










There is a cherry wood desk that is next to her chair. She keeps her medication, cigarettes, and her nieces drawings that she gives her great aunt every time she sees her. The drawings are wild with bursts of color hear and there. Most people would call it scribbling but her great aunt would say otherwise. The old woman tells her niece “Every time you come to my house you better bring one of those amazing drawings of yours or else you are not welcome!” She would say it in a joking manner. Pauline liked to examine the pictures try to find what the meaning of them, what was her niece trying to represent. Also painted her paintings told a story in her mind even if they didn’t in yours.
When her family comes to her house they always have lunch. They sit around a six foot rectangular table that is placed directly across from the mud room in a awkward opening. There are ten chairs around the large table. Pauline had eight children they would always eat lunch together. Her family and her always have bagels, cream cheese, salmon and diet coke. They sit around the table and talk about life, How there Aunt Pauline is doing and how her niece is doing

After they finish their lunch her niece and her parents get their luggage and bring it into the guest house. It is a small red barn with a crooked porch facing the garden. The structure has two bed rooms and a kitchen. Its cozy but you can still smell the hay that was once piled wall to wall. Every step sounds like the floors are about to cave in. The walls have chipped paint and the ceilings have little water stains from a leaky stone roof.

The property is full of memories, good times and fun parties from when life was good. Although the family might not go to that place that often there, are always memories built within.


The author's comments:
This story is about my Aunt Pauline and my family visits to her house.

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