You walk up five stairs to a small, beige, stone, cottage-like, house, located in the tiny town of Maywood, New Jersey. You walk through the front door and inhale the same smell that has existed for sixteen years of my life. The smell never changes. It is a smell that cannot be described and that lingers throughout the entire house. You walk into a foyer. On the left is an antique, electric fireplace and on the right is an entire wall of mirrors that stare right back at you and that remind me of the times where my sisters, my cousins, and I put on shows for ourselves through the mirrors. In the left corner of the wall, there is one mirror missing, which reveals the age and the depreciation of the house. The small foyer is crowded with thousands of photos of all of the five grandchildren; one desk is filled with communion photos, one with school photos, and on the top of the fireplace lays four high school graduation photos, and every time I look at them, it makes me think about how long I have until I am up there.

You keep walking to see a flight of stairs, which used to seem like an infinite amount of stairs, leading to the attic. You walk into the cold room, where I remember playing. There is a massive dollhouse and a tub of Barbie dolls beside it, waiting to be played with. I remember being the youngest in my family and the day where I asked my older sisters to play with me and for the first time, they rejected my offer. You go further through the attic, where there is a narrow hallway, leading to slanted ceilings that you can only fit under if you walk directly in the middle. You see an unusual circle chair that the whole family used to be able to fit in, but is now a struggle fitting one person into it. After hours of sitting, playing, and relaxing upstairs, you hear Nanny call down for dinner and you know that if you do not come down to the kitchen quickly, she was coming up after you.

You go into the kitchen filled with memories of playing cards and coloring Easter eggs. Every time you walk into the kitchen there is a perfectly green and colorful salad waiting at the table. Every dinner at Nanny’s is the same as well- chicken, corn, salad, and a baked potato that you only let nanny mash because she was best at it. The air conditioning is always blasting in the kitchen so I finish my dinner as quickly as possible and run into my mother’s old bedroom. There is a small couch, which pulls out into a bed, an ancient desktop computer that is older than I am, a small television, and another endless amount of family photos. I open the creaky closet door, pull out a blanket, turn on the TV, and reflect upon how this was my mother’s bedroom, and how she lived in here for her entire childhood life.

Although everything in Nanny’s house is pretty much the same as it has always been, the regular routines, such as weekly dinners and sleepovers, are now memories. All of my cousins and sisters are away at college and even though I would love to spend more time at Nanny’s house, with school and extracurricular activities, everyone is too busy. Perhaps the hundreds of hanging photos reflect on the memories we had, and her growing collection, proves that even though not everything is the same, new memories will be created. For example, although dinner at Nanny’s may not be as often, it gives us all a chance to miss each other and create stories and memories we can share and fortunately, when we do come together it is as if nothing has changed.