By Nancy Buchanan

There are seventy steps from the street to my house. Oddly, that was about the same number of steps (plus a short path) to my Grandmother Page’s house. Along the big steps formed from California river rocks, abalone shells graced the sides and a fork led to a double fishpond in which dime-store fantails, popeyed moors and goldfish had cross-bred and grown huge. There was a glider swing on the front porch, perfect for hiding under, and around the back an outdoor shower to rinse off the beach sand. I went to live in Grandmother Page’s house when I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. I didn’t have a horrible case, but there were no drugs at that time—treatment was bed rest, and it was considered quite contagious. I had been a very active three-year old; I loved to pump swings until they “bumped” at the top of the chain or rope, and to be outdoors. Now I was in bed. For more than an entire year. I didn’t yet know how to read. But Grandmother Page had always written stories for me, about the lizards and birds and the cat living around her house. Now, together we went through reams of typing paper, making up stories together, which we would both illustrate—but her pictures were always better than mine. I loved to invent stories about witches, and every day we focused on a different color of witch; my favorite was the purple witch. She had a purple ponytail, wore yellow clothes with purple polka-dots, and rode a purple horse. I can still see her fierce eyes. My grandparents built their house in 1923; an old man who specialized in making fireplaces created a heron made out of hand-cut stones on each side of the hearth. The house sprawled across two lots and looked toward the beach. Now, two huge boxes replace the stone steps and adjacent hillside, and the old house is gone. The land was too “valuable” for a single home, I guess.