Every visit to Nanny’s began with the same family joke: “Welcome to Nanny’s Nut House.” Just like Nanny, her house was nutty but always warm and welcoming.
The house wasn’t big by any means, but it was always full of people. It was a magical place where our family of more than a dozen people would gather. For my immediate family, that journey took more than nine hours.
Once we finally arrived in Friendswood, Texas, we would roll into the cracked driveway of Nanny’s one-story home in the cul-de-sac on Barcelona Drive, which had been the location for many cousin kickball games.
My siblings and I would scramble out of the car, run up a rock path past her flowers and plants along the side of the house, and reach the small but mighty front porch, where knickknacks and decorations surrounded the entrance.
Nanny’s front door had a bright red frame that matched the color of her hair (which stayed perfectly curled and fiery red until she died in 2023).
After passing under the “Welcome to the Nut House” sign on the porch, we would see our grandfather through the screen door in his La-Z-Boy, usually watching the Houston Rockets, and Nanny waiting with a big smile.
She would creak the door open with arms outstretched, and the smell of her famous chicken-n-dumplings and banana “butt” bread (I told you she was nutty) would hit us in the face.
The front hallway had a massive China cabinet with Longaberger baskets on top, which was flanked by two photos of my grandparents and one glamour shot of Nanny in a red, feathered boa. Those were just a few of the many pictures, trinkets and treasures scattered throughout Nanny’s home.
She wasted no time feeding us. Immediately after our reunion, we’d make our way to the kitchen through the living room, where nothing matched except for the three taxidermied deer hanging at either end of the room. The two deer that shared a wall were separated by a wooden sign that said “Aloha” and was punctuated with a white plumeria.
The television was normally still blasting as we shuffled into her oak breakfast booth at the kitchen table. The three other standalone chairs around the table were for the adults.
Above the booth were two bay windows with yellow, ruffled curtains swooping over the cubbies like bangs. Nanny kept countless random things in these cubbies like a horse-and-carriage toothpick holder, seashells, her medicine basket, an amber hen dish and jadeite salt-and-pepper shakers. The kitchen walls were covered with her most treasured items: her souvenir plates from all over.
The kitchen was about as wide as the table we gathered around and about as long as a Honda Civic. It was the smallest room in the house, but that was where we spent most of our time. We would play cards, bake, eat, listen to each other’s stories and, most importantly, laugh. Nanny had the most infectious laugh.
It’s been three years since Nanny passed, and the house looks completely different. Her treasures have been sold off, the house was redone with white paint and gray flooring and a new family has moved in.
It’s no longer the house that I once called my favorite place. There will never be another “Nanny’s Nut House,” but it really wasn’t the house that made it my favorite.
It was Nanny.
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