The Triple-Decker

My grandmother lived on the second floor of a triple-decker in Worcester for forty-six years.

The back stairs were always icy in winter, the radiators clanked at night, and somebody was forever cooking onions downstairs. Her apartment was small, but every cousin somehow fit in it on holidays.

She kept plastic over the good couch and a coffee can full of buttons in the pantry. When we were kids, we thought she saved everything because she was old. Later I understood she saved things because life had taught her not to waste.

That apartment is gone now. The feeling of it is not.