My grandmother’s house is full of treasures and my daughter, six years old, wanders through it with her very own camera taking pictures of the things that catch her fancy. “I love all the old fashinoned things in Great Grandma’s house,” she says. She takes a picture of a resin clock be-decked with pigs and chickens; the doll made of wooden spools lying in a tiny doll carriage; a framed photograph of my cousin’s new daughter, the charming baby Myra.

We have come to the Sierra Nevadas on a girl’s weekend. It is one of those trips where you are always thinking, “This might be our last time to see her.” Although when we arrive, a new arthritis medicine has worked its magic and my Grandmother is actually up and about, moving steadily but slowly around the house, unraveling her twisted fingers to make the coffee, progressing inch by inch through a knitting project – all things we never thought she’d be able to do again. Grandma is growing her hair longer to hide the hearing aids which will soon arrive. (This small vanity strikes me as both funny and hopeful.) She drives her car only around the corner to the Safeway, a long piece of plastic coated metal bolted to the key, the only way she can get enough leverage to turn it with her gnarled hand. She can’t really make it up the stairs, but she modestly praises her and my Grandfather for planning the house so cleverly. Everything she really needs – the master bedroom with the low-entry shower, the kitchen with the electric can and jar opener, the living room with the recliner next to the wood stove –is all on the main floor. My Grandfather, Buddy, developed a blood disease four years ago and quietly went about installing a sprinkler system; selling his truck; switching the wood stove to propane; telling us in deeds rather than words that his time here was drawing to an end. Now my grandmother moves through this house and this tiny town with his ghost. She smokes cigarettes and picks at her food and chides my aunt for not stopping by on a daily basis. But for us, the out-of-town relatives, she rallies and we go on small outings between naps.

Yesterday my Aunt Judy arranged such an outing for us. Judy is the patron saint of patient daughters to aging mothers. She recently quit her job to be caretaker of Grandma, and Grandmother (Mimi) to Myra. Yesterday she found out that there was a historical re-enactment at Sutter’s Mill, the place where gold was first found in California. We picked up my cousin Laurie and Myra and caravanned down the mountain to Coloma and the American River. Eden was delighted at the “old fashioned” town. She saw the inside of a pioneer cabin and was allowed to take a tiny china doll out of a sewing basket that was resting on one of the rough bunks. A few yards down the river she found a group of costumed women dipping candles in fire-heated pots of tallow, and churning butter which she was allowed to taste on a cracker. A man in a deerskin coat and a wide hat poured molten lead into a hand press, then tipped a silver ball of shot out into his gloved hand. Four dollar bought us the use of a gold pan and a man in tattered clothing with a bushy white beard taught Eden how to pan. “You know why I like teaching girls better than boys?” Rodney the goldminer asked the crowd of children, “They listen better than boys!” All the children laughed. Eden concentrated as Rodney helped her circle the pan. Her yield: two tiny round garnets and two small flecks of gold. Later Laurie held seats for us on a horse drawn wagon and we tripped up and down the river for a bit. When we got back the bluegrass band was playing, and Grandma was exhausted. So we grabbed ice cream bars for a sustaining snack (Eden is always hungry) and drove home for naps.

Later we baked up a pre-made pizza and ate in our pajamas. My Grandmother talked about missing Buddy and how she didn’t want to be in a convalescent home. I told her about Jen and how she held space for two kinds of births; the births of infants as a doula and the birth into new life as a gifted hospice guide. I talked about Eden’s godmother Amber, and how she has hosted two grandparents as they’ve passed from this life and been birthed into another. I told my grandmother that I wanted to learn how to do that, how to be present with people in aging and sickness and death. I hope she will let me do that with her. There’s been no talk this trip of “going up to the mountain to die.” (Most likely aided by a large stock of prescriptions.) “Life goes by in a flash,” Grandma says, “You can’t win them all…but we’ve won most of them. It’s been wonderful. Wonderful.” Her favorite refrain is, “We’ve been so blessed…so blessed.”

Today we will hang out at the house, letting Grandma recover from yesterday – a bigger day then she has seen in months. Eden will put her snow pants on to tromp in the old snow piled up in back yard. She likes to bury a palm-sized carved bear, sticking a small branch in the snow to mark the spot. She digs this up and buries it again and again. At lunch time Judy will come over with her tea set in tow. There’s a teapot shaped like Snow White kissing Bashful, the sugar bowl is a wagon tugged by dwarves, the spoon a tiny shovel. Eden will be delighted. They will make sugar cookies and sweet tea and ask each other to “Kindly pass the milk, madame.” And I will move around in this bittersweet soup of contentedness and company, sadness and good memory, anticipated loss. But I am glad we’ve come, to this place of stories, to this house full of treasures.