listening to stories

I never really had a relationship with my grandparents. My dad's parents both died before I was born, and my mom's parents lived far away and died while I was in middle school. Luckily for me though, Baba (who is really my friend's grandma) stepped in and has been my grandmother for the last fifteen years. She lives in a little duplex overlooking a ravine filled with Eucalyptus trees in Santa Cruz.
When I wander around her house as I did this morning, I love to ask the story behind everything she has. She has intentionally kept her belongings to a minimum, so the items she does put on display have been placed there with great care. I clicked these shots as she told Cristina and I about traveling alone to China and India in the 1970s and about the trauma she still remembers feeling as a child during the Great Depression.