When I was small, I spent most of my pre-school years with my grandparents in the south of Taiwan. Because I was closer to my grandpa than my grandma, I could not recall much time I spent with her. In my memory, she is an Elementary school teacher who brings student's homework home to mark, the one who buys crushed ice for us in summer and who would listen to ghost stories broadcast through the radio in the middle of the night. That are all I knew about her. After my grandpa died, my grandma moved in with us to Taipei. It has been over seven years since my grandma moved in with us, and through these years I get to know her more day by day.
Like most grandparents who shows their love through their cooking, Grandma is very concerned on the food we eat. She tries her best to make her cooking delicious to our appetite and to be nutritious. She often complained how the thinking of what to cook everyday can become a headache to her, yet she still does her best to prepare dinner for us. When I go home every weekend, she will prepare the dishes which I like because she thinks the food I eat outside are not good. She always treats me as a guest when I come home from school. For her, her workload increases when weekend arrives.

Keeping our home nice and tidy is another way for her to show her love. My grandma emphasizes house neatness very much. Every morning her first work after she gets up is to sweep our house. I never knew I was a person who likes cleanliness very much before I lived with her. Because of her habit I can't stand the floor being all dusty. Keeping house clean and tidy isn't an easy and ordinary job. It takes a lot of effort to do so and to perfect in it. I am really thankful for what she did to keep our house neat and clean. I am always proud of the cleanness of our home.

One of the joys she gave me was her interesting comments on many things. When our family are all sitting down in one room discussing one event, we could hear different opinions from different points of view, and often times my grandma's opinions were quite different; none of us would view the event that way. I really enjoy showing her the photographs and hearing her opinions about them. Her opinion is always very unique and sometimes very funny.

Undeniably, there are times of complaints. Sometimes I couldn't understand about her stubbornness on her out-dated concepts and get really disappointed when she could not understand what I am trying to tell her. Dispute over different ideas happens very often during our weekend dinners when all our family members gather together. 

There is a Chinese proverb saying that living with an elder in the house is like having a precious treasure stored in the house. For her generation, the way they show their love is subtle, more are done than said. This is different from the present way of showing love. Sometimes we might doubt the love expressed through mouthes. Although sometimes we find her like to make a fuss about things for a long time, just like most elder people, or that we find her very stubborn over something, it really is our luck to be able to live with a grandma. Now she has a big place in my memory and I don't know how many good times we would have missed if we had not had a chance to live with her.