I can’t remember the last time I visited grandma’s house. I know it was only a while ago, but monumental events of covid, middle school graduation, and beginning highschool, that exploded and overlapped in such a short amount of time, like a messed up fireworks show, have created a lot of distance since I’ve last seen grandma's house. 

Ever since I’ve traveled halfway across the globe to attend high school, my life has been on a constant move. With no home in the US, I slept on countless different beds and lived in various different hotels, host families, and dormitories. My green Samsonite suitcase became my best travel buddy and permanent closet during the holidays. My multiple times of flying solo across the world have also refined my semi-pro jet lag adjusting skills and taught me the basic structure of any international airport and how to retrieve a lost passport and I-20 within a flight-transfer time crunch (hint: it’s not fun). It was my childhood dream to become a world traveler because I never knew how much I would terribly miss home, and going back to grandma’s seemed so distant in the past.  

Yet when I got out of my uncle’s dirt-stained white jeep that smelled of cigarettes, and stepped on the pebble road that led to the yellow doors of her home since the 1980s, all the years that punctuated my visits vanished. It was like yesterday since I celebrated my seventh birthday at that house.

Since hugging is a part of American culture, I’ve also taken my share of hugs from various people. From post-performances to farewells at the end of the school year, none of them has surpassed the hug of my grandma.  

Grandma comes out of the house as soon as she hears the car doors slam shut, beaming as she hurries over to hug me. I used to hate this routine because grandma would squeeze me to the brink of suffocation and my face would be buried deep in her clothes that smelled of aging wood from her closet. As she scurried over, I realized that she dyed back her hair black, which made her look so much younger and energetic, like a painting restored to its former glory. It reminded me of memories of grandma piggybacking me down the streets; I hated the thought of her turning old. The bear hug that I had dreaded yet anticipated for such a long time turned out to be much more underwhelming. The height that I’ve gained over the years made me a head taller than grandma, and I was now wrapping my arms around her like a blanket. Her suffocating hug was now a squeeze on my waist, so I guess I have assumed the role of the bearhugger from now on. 

Yellow doors are the guards of grandma’s house. Roughly built and installed throughout the rooms, these yellow doors screeched high-pitched cacophonies with every push or pull and had to be forcefully jammed into the doorframe in order to properly close with a heavy “thump.” The locks for these doors were also questionable, with a single metal wire hook and loop installed on the interior side that set the difference between “safe” and “unsafe.” Despite its suspicious design, no one has been able to break through these locks…except once. 

I was nine and showering alone in the bathroom with the door locked, and about to finish, until a saucer-sized spider graced me with its appearance as it climbed right over the lock that separated me from salvation. After a few desperate screams, my grandparents located me, and after a few more cries, they understood my situation, where I was under the evil hostage of a spider. The next ten minutes were spent trying to rescue me out of my dire situation through attempts via: 

A. slamming on the door to scare away the spider

B. encouraging/coaxing me to open the lock from the inside. 

The spider and I were both unaffected by these attempts. 

Eventually, the multiple slams opened a crack in the door, and grandpa broke through the door by sticking his hand inside to pick the lock with a fork, and I was saved as my cousin fearlessly crushed the spider to its death. That was the last time I showered at grandma’s with the door locked and the only time a locked door was broken in. So along with the almost theft-proof metal wire locks and the occasional spider to scare away any potential threats, the yellow doors remain in strong defense of grandma’s house. 

As I walked inside, I surveyed my surroundings out of habit. As expected, not much had changed. Light sources were still provided by light bulbs dangling off the ceiling from thin electrical wires, emanating a glow just enough to move around the house without crashing into anything during the night. During the blazing summers without AC, the same 2000s poster ads of a bald man advertising insurance would be pasted onto the windows to block out sunlight. However, the years of sun blocking severely sunbleached the posters, so much that the posters were now virtually white except for a faint yellow semi-circle shape outlining the bald man’s head. A mini green wooden stool that has existed ever since I could remember had its leg broken by six-year-old me. I chucked the helpless stool with all my might onto the concrete floors of grandma’s yard because grandpa wanted to watch dynastic China-themed TV shows while my favorite cartoon was on air; I still don’t know what happened to those two grizzly bears and hunter to this day. Instead of throwing away the stool, grandpa fixed the broken leg with twine and sits on it every time to shuck corn. 

The house stayed practically the same since I left a few years ago, and this usually annoyed me. I used to hate coming back to grandma’s because I’d grown tired of putting up with the same inconveniences such as navigating the darkness with the aid of a useless lightbulb, sitting on a half-broken stool, and so much more. Instead of the usual annoyance of seeing these repetitions again, I was flooded with past memories of similar encounters, and I could almost see younger versions of myself before my eyes. I too used to hate the hugs and kisses grandma overwhelmed me with, but now I sometimes wish I could transform back into a younger me and let grandma’s suffocating hugs be the only thing I worry about in the world. How long has it been since I last locked the yellow doors with the questionable locks?

These aspects shaped my childhood, creating an intimate connection that I had been unaware of within me and marked my growth at grandma’s. I had forgotten how I missed the feeling of waking up in a bed that has carried me since childhood or knowing the rooms of a house like how I knew myself. 

When I flew back home after my first year abroad, I was hoping to finally return to something familiar after all the constant shifting I’ve gone through. But when I finally stepped inside the cream-colored tiles of the apartment that I’d grown up in for ten years, familiarity didn’t come back. 

Instead of directly changing from shoes to my personal slippers that were usually placed on the floor, I had to open the cabinet to wear guest slippers because I left mine in America. I never realized how spacious the study room table was without my piles of school work, nor how quiet the house was without me. Even my bedroom felt different. The usually crumpled bed sheets and messy blankets were neat and tidy, there wasn’t a red backpack slumped against the wall, and my desk looked naked without my laptop. Is this real, I would question to myself, that I was a stranger in my own house; home without me didn’t feel like home. The familiarity that I had anticipated for so long no longer existed in my apartment.

But coming back to grandma’s to see how things have virtually remained the same since childhood, the familiarity that I thought had lost came embracing back to me again. It was comforting to know that they were still here after these years: a temporary constant in my ever-changing life, the anchor in a storm of change. Yet I also knew that the wasn’t anchor forever. Grandma dyeing her hair was like painting rusting-metal gold; her hair may be black but that doesn’t mean she isn’t aging. I fear thinking even further down the line, and I hate the helplessness of not having the power to grasp on forever to my anchor, but all that I can do is to cling on as long as I can. 

The sky could turn pink tomorrow, or I could miraculously start befriending spiders, but I know that grandma’s house will be there, with its sun-bleached posters and creaky yellow doors waiting for me to come home.