The little apartment my Oma lived in was a shabby chic wet dream. I felt like I was invading a very private part of her - it took her death to drag me over to Germany for the first time in 19 years to see her (if looking at an urn containing your grandmother’s ashes counts as “seeing” her). And here I was, camera in hand, digging through her things and documenting her personal space, like a damned archaeologist. Impartial. Indifferent. I didn’t know how to feel.

She had pictures of the grandkids everywhere. Frames on the dresser, school photos tucked into boxes and strewn amid jewelry boxes adorned with seashells, like she bought out a souvenir shop in Myrtle Beach. There were porcelain dolls staring out from curio cabinets and plants everywhere, reaching out of the coffee grounds she saved and dumped into the planters. Several sets of playing cards, and coin purses stuffed to the brim with one and two cent pieces for poker night with her girlfriends. Stacks of sweaters. Sheet sets she was planning on sending to us here in America, one set already boxed up with a shipping label that never quite made it to the post office. Seven or eight unopened bottles of wine.

I spent five years of my life with her on a daily basis. My mom would get lonely with my dad stationed out in one place or another, so we’d pack up and spend our days with my Oma in her little house in Heimbach. She always had a liter bottle of sprudelwasser outside the entry way to the kitchen, and I slurped it down the way kids slurp soda. She kept a puzzle underneath the dining room bench - I damn near had it memorized, as I sat at the table putting it together, taking it apart, and putting it back together again while Oma made lentil soup, or roasted a rabbit for dinner.  

I barely knew her.

ianbrooks:

8-Bit LED Holiday Wreath

Available at ThinkGeek for $19.00 USD 

(via: it8bit)

Things I absolutely do not need but absolutely want.

(via geek-art)