I found myself on Google Maps the other day. I mean I was using Google Maps to look up an address. Although I did happen to stumble upon a piece of myself when I got there.

8 East Street, Hicksville, NY. (Yes, Hicksville is a real place!) Grandma hasn’t lived there in sometime near 20 years, but looking at its picture was like looking through a time portal. Gosh, I love that house. From the outside, with the exception of some new windows, it doesn’t look like it’s changed a bit. I’m grateful for that.

Thanksgiving fell around Gram’s birthday, so we’d celebrate both with the whole family at her house. Gram’s five sons and their families plus mom and our family took up all the space in that house. I can’t explain how we all fit. (Now that would’ve made for an amazing game of Sardines!) There were two bedrooms on the main floor, and the attic and basement were also used as bedrooms. There was one toilet in the whole house (not counting the chamber pot in the attic). I mean, that was hard for the two days we were there, but can you imagine growing up with five brothers and only one toilet?

Thanksgiving was extra special with the extensive family and the traditions of the parade and the spread, but Gram’s was always a place where I was happy to be. The food had a lot to do with it; homemade chocolate chip cookies, real mashed potatoes, soldiers (toast sticks and soft-boiled eggs), ham salad on Ritz, pumpkin pie. And there were other random things that I loved like the swing set in the back yard, her green Dodge Dart, the train whistle throughout the day, Little People and Fisher Price toys in the basement, the Care Bears resting on the bed pillows, and her 3-foot artificial Christmas tree. She taught me to play Rummikub, which she would play with her girlfriends on her trips to St. Martin. And of course there was Days of Our Lives. I think she might have been the very first viewer of that soap, and didn’t miss many, if any, episodes in the forty years from its air date until she passed.

I was in college when she sold the house in Hicksville. She actually moved closer to us, so I was able to see her more often, and her new home was just as welcoming and comfortable for holidays and regular days, even though it also had only one toilet.

Gram passed in 2005 at the age of 94. I miss her and I miss her homes, and now that I have a daughter, I miss her even more. I wish Ellie could have spent those Thanksgivings with her so much that I try to replicate the things I love and miss about those times.

Mementos. Trivial, materialistic, wastes of space? Or time machines in disguise that transport us to a place where our happiness grew? I found a Fisher Price retro cash register for $2 at a thrift shop and felt like I’d won the lottery. I bought my daughter Care Bears and Little People figures when she was a toddler. I have my own 3-foot artificial Christmas tree that I decorate with little multi-color lights and all of my tacky ornaments. I brought Rummikub to Turks and Caicos so I could play it with my girlfriends. I’d forgotten how to play in the 30 years since Gram had taught me, and the rum drinks weren’t helping to jog my memory, but I was happy to try, and grateful that my friends played along with me. When we moved into our home five years ago, a train whistled as it passed through town in the middle of the night, and I smiled knowing then that I had definitely chosen the right house.

Do I really need these things taking up space in my home? Yes. Yes I do. Because it is these objects that help me to find those spaces in my heart and mind where my happiness lives. It’s a good thing to have reminders of who and what nurtured your happiness, whether it’s a sound, a toy, or a tacky 3-foot artificial Christmas tree.

Where do you wish you could go back to? What mementos will you continue to hold onto?