1215 Manzanita Drive

I miss my grandfather. He's been dead for quite a few years now but I think about him everyday. When I lived in San Francisco I would take the train out to Millbrae a few times a month to visit him. His name was Elmer but everyone referred to him as "Whitey" on account of his super blond hair. He was sweet and unassuming. He was a Merchant Marine and grew up in Chicago. He laughed at his own jokes unabashedly, which is good because they weren't that funny. He kept a large canister in the kitchen that contained a mix of about 6 breakfast cereals. "Why limit yourself to just one kind?" He got a gold Cadillac when he retired and he loved me. My mother and sister are in California now cleaning out the house where he lived, nestled in a suburb that would make Tim Burton feel at home. His wife recently passed and now we can finalize things and perhaps move on a bit or, at the very least, grieve in a different way. Once the house sells it's done. No more coffee on the veranda or picking lemons from the tree in the backyard. Really, no more hearing him laugh or whistling lazily while moving orchid pots around the garden or waiting for him to look away so I could leave the waitress a little more money. No more 'Okay Vanessa, okay.'