Assignment: After reading Barbara Kingsolver's essay, "Knowing Our Place", respond with your own creative piece regarding "place". Choose a geographical location that was important to you in childhood, describe this location, and explain the importance of that space for you.
-- By Jennifer Sewell, Writing 12
Snow falls and snow melts; the horizon remains fixed; and the years pass.
One place that stays the same in my memory is a small double-wide trailer on Henry Road.
It belongs to the most influential people I have ever encountered: my
grandparents. This place was the most important location of my childhood.
There was not a week that went by that I was not there.
Everything, from life lessons to simple baking procedures, I learned from that amazing place.
The trailer was not anything fancy, or enriched with expensive items.
The simplicity of this place made me feel more at home than I did in my own house. As soon as I walked through the door, there was the distinct smell of my grandparents, a smell I can only
describe as perfect.
The people who resided in that place were the best part of it all.
My grandparents have been married for 52 years, and seeing them together made me learn so many things.
They were truly made for eachother.
Together they made me believe that true love really does exist, and because of them, I will always believe it abides.
Back in elementary school whenever I was under the weather, my grandma or grandpa would pick me up from school and bring me back to my favourite place. I was always comforted with a hot bowl of soup along with The Price is Right playing on the television.
Many times, I wasn't even sick; spending the whole day with the best people in the world was the best reason to feign illness.
I learned every card game I know from this household, everything from rummy to cribbage.
My grandparents had every game in their capacious games closet, every child's dream come true.
Around Christmas time every year, my sisters and I would go to this amazing place to help my grandma with baking.
Traditionally, we would make thin bread, sugar cookies, ginger snaps, sugar plums, and shortbread cookies.
From this extraordinary place, I learned almost everything I know now.
Life will never be easy, but that's not a reason not to smile.
Love unconditionally, and don't let go of what really matters. Pain will always exist in life, but that's never a
reason to give up.
Most importantly, always be
yourself. Life is too short to try and be someone you are not, so though you may not seem perfect through your own eyes, you are, through someone else's.
My grandparents do not live in this trailer any longer, but this place is where I learned who the real
Jennifer is.
I will never forget the memories of which those amazing walls could speak.
This place will forever be in my heart, and, though seasons change, this place is fixed in my personal horizon.
