My uncles and my dad played the card game sitting around the little table at Grandpa’s house. The card deck was like any other deck, but the game was played in Czech. 

Aunt Suzy let us touch the tiny blue cups and plates, all edged with gold and painted with delicate white flowers, their veins thin shiny lines, and their edges tinged purple with little golden balls at the blossom’s centers. 

 

At Grandpa’s house, there were old things, treasured things, Czech things.

We took turns in the music room at Grandpa’s house. Everyone started on piano. When it wasn’t your turn, you were drawn to the kitchen, past the table of Czech card playing, to the smell of warm chocolatey cookies. Now was your turn to spoon the dough onto the pans for baking, and test the ones cooling that came before you. 

 

At Grandpa’s house, you could go past the little clock where the little boy and little girl would swing in a scene of summer sun and flowers all day long, and step down into the porch room full of windows, and the lights on the fish tanks where little gold, and black, and those funny tiny clear fish would swim and swim. 

There were books upon books on the shelves at Grandpa’s house, some he’d written in Czech. Grandpa’s pipe smoke clung to him. When you sat on his lap, you’d tuck your face to his sleeve or chest and know stillness, and music, and belonging. Pac-a-pusa, my dad and his brother and sisters would say as one-by-one we’d head home from Grandpa’s house.