Gramma's House

On time, inheritance and a house that holds everything.

My Gramma Julie turned 100 years old in January. She still lives in the house she and my Grandpa Bill bought in Chatham, Cape Cod, in the 1970s. She has lived there alone since he passed in 2002. She has not changed a single thing.

I have been visiting this house my entire life. Every time I pull into the driveway and come through the front door, something happens to time. The entranceway is small, barely big enough for two people, and you cram in with your bags and your coat and before you’ve put anything down, you hear her voice from the kitchen. She’s already making something. Clam chowder, stuffed sole, a cheese platter, marinated mushrooms. When I was a little girl, there was always an apple pie waiting in the garage, because that was my favorite, and so it always was.

The house smells like butter and florals with something soft underneath, something old. The kind of scent that only belongs to a place that has been loved by the same person for fifty years.

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My dad was an only child, and I’m her only granddaughter. She has always made me feel special and loved in a way that feels uniquely hers. She tells me how proud she is of me. She takes an interest in my life in a way that goes beyond polite. She asks real questions. She watches all of my Instagram stories. She reads every one of these Substacks. She responds to everything.

When I was a little girl, we laughed a lot together. We still do. We have our inside jokes. She still brings up things from decades ago, like how she was always losing her glasses and I was always the one who found them.

What I love about my relationship with my Gramma is that it’s a connection to another time. She is two generations away from me. She was born in 1926. She was a young woman during the war. She raised a family, built a home, lost her husband and kept going. When I sit across from her at her dining room table, I am sitting with someone who has lived through an entire century of life, and she is still here, still laughing, still asking me questions about my life in Mexico.

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Nothing in this house has changed. The wallpaper is the same. The paintings hang where she hung them. The candy dishes sit in the same spots they’ve been in since before I was born. My Gramma decorated every inch of it herself, and every room is its own world: the floral dining room with the pewter and the Windsor chairs, the living room with its Persian rug and ship painting over the fireplace, a bathroom upstairs with lime green and blue bird wallpaper that shouldn’t work and completely does, the pink bathroom with rose wallpaper and pink tile that I thought was the most glamorous room in the world when I was five.

She has a very specific eye. She matched the fabric of the curtains to the upholstered chair cushions to the bedspread. She picked wallpaper that no one else would have chosen and made it look like the only possible option. I think, more than anyone in my life, my Gramma taught me about style. Not fashion, but the deeper thing. The way a home can feel like a complete expression of the person who made it. The way details matter, not because anyone else is looking, but because you know they’re right.

So much of what I’ve built with Wu Haus comes from her. The interiors, the hosting, the food, the belief that how you set a table says something about how you move through the world. She planted that seed. She’s been planting it my whole life, and I’m only now starting to see how deep the roots go.

She’s gifted me so many beautiful things over the years that were once hers. I’ve started a small collection of heirlooms in my own home, pieces that carry her with them. It’s the inheritance I care about most, not the material value, but the continuity. The thread between her life and mine.

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My Grandpa Bill was a man who loved the water. The den is still his room. Nautical wallpaper, ship paintings, blue built-in shelves. There’s a navy leather recliner in the corner where he would sit and play his trumpet, or his banjo, or write in his journal. He had a distinguished laugh and a strong personality, charismatic and opinionated, genuinely interested in other people’s perspectives but very firm on his own views. He was a storyteller. He narrated life. I heard most of his stories from that chair.

When I was a kid, visits to Chatham felt like the whole world opened up. My Grandpa owned boats, so we’d spend the day on the water or at the beach clamming and come home sunburned and sandy and rinse off in the outdoor shower on the patio. The house was full and loud. Everything moved fast.

Now it’s slower. My Gramma doesn’t leave the house much anymore. We can get her out for a couple of dinners, or a trip to the grocery store, but she doesn’t come to the beach with us. She hasn’t in a while. It’s quieter. It’s sweeter. And I am aware, every single time I visit, of how lucky I am to still be walking through that door.

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My brother and I slept in the room with the pale pink wallpaper and the green carpet. The vanity in the corner was my favorite thing in the whole house. I would sit there and arrange the perfume bottles and study my face in the gold and white mirror and pretend I was getting ready for something very important. I was maybe seven.

There are candy dishes scattered throughout the house. There have always been candy dishes, filled with Canada Mints and Andes chocolates and gumdrops.

Gumdrop was my Grandpa’s nickname for me.

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My Gramma is the greatest hostess I have ever known. Everyone gains five pounds after a weekend at her house. She cooks for days. She sets the table with the sterling. She has all her recipes written in perfect cursive on recipe index cards in her cupboard. She will not sit down until everyone has been served. And at the end of the night, she is the last one up, polishing each piece of silver by hand, because that is how it’s done.

There is no railing on the front steps of her house. There has never been one. She won’t allow it because she thinks it would look ugly. Instead, she grabs onto a bush next to the stairs and pulls herself up. She is 100 years old, and the bush is her railing. That is my Gramma.

I always ask her what her secret is. To long life, to beauty, to happiness. She says, “Oh, I don’t know. It must be the ocean air.”

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We took Tedros to Chatham for the first time last October. He was six months old.

There is a video I have of him sitting in my Gramma’s lap in the wingback chair in the living room. She’s playing with Sophie, his little French giraffe, and they are both laughing. I watch it sometimes when I miss her, and it fills me up in a way I can’t quite explain. This woman who has been one of the most important women in my life since the day I was born, holding my son. A new cycle beginning inside the same four walls.

Tedros’ middle name is William, after my Grandpa Bill. His due date was close to my Grandpa’s birthday, but he came early. We didn’t know it when we chose the name, but Tedros was born on the 23rd anniversary of my Grandpa’s passing.

When I leave Chatham, I always feel full. Full belly, full heart. Restored from being in a place that holds so much of me. The ocean, the family, the memories from every stage of my life, all held inside a house that smells like butter and flowers and time.

And then, on the drive home, there is always a moment where something catches. Because I have been saying this for almost two decades now, but I don’t know if that’s the last time. You never know with anyone, at any age. But at this stage of life, the feeling is right there, close to the surface. So you hold on a little tighter. You stay a little longer. You let her polish the silver.

Happy Mother’s Day, Gramma Julie.

Here’s to you and the ocean air.

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