When I wasn't allowed to go outside I would create new adventures inside Gammas house.
The house was old and built when rooms were connected in a different way than they are today. Rooms of grand sizes with full length windows that children could actually see the world from and ceilings that climb high over head with giant light fixtures and closets and cubby holes were put absolutely anywhere that there was unused space.
I was a very curious and imaginative child and there were many areas in her house that beckoned for me to explore them. To open their doors or burrow through antique drawers and boxes in rooms that had belonged to someone else long ago.
The attic frightened me with all the dust and furniture draped in ghostly cloths, but the worst about the attic was the huge mouse traps all along the floor of one wall that had snapped at me when I walked by and a bird would flit passed my face at blinding speed in warming me away. I quickly avoided seeking out discovery in the cramped smelly spaces up there.
The basement was another thing all together, it was a great place to discover interesting things. Cool and dark and a treasure trove of rooms filled with undiscovered belongings, like boxes stuffed with ridiculous looking clothing, memorabilia and photographs of people I had never and would never meet.
Artifacts from all over the world littered many of these rooms, closets and nooks. It was in one of these rooms that I discovered a lost stash of very old wine in dusty bottles, from which I sampled heavily the acidic ambrosia and ended up wasting the rest of the day vomiting while my Gamma held me gently and cooed about how everything would be better tomorrow.
I also spent the cold wet days of that year running back up the long staircases again and again after sliding all the way down the slick aluminum sided laundry chute to land in the huge basket in the basement, something that back at home didn't even exist and I found to be amazingly fun despite Gamma's protests.
But as much fun as I had inside the large house the longing to be back outside, even in the freezing cold, to play in my beloved playground with my imaginary friends didn't leave me for one moment. I could feel them watching me from the roof of the tree house and waiting for me to emerge.
Gamma did her best to fill in the time on those lonely days away from the garden while my mother was busy and I tried to make her happy in return by playing along. There was a large shiny black piano in the room she called the parlor where she and I would sit at the keyboard and try to teach me how to play.