Broadish

My grandparents lived in a wonderful house on a wide street that was not long. In fact, it was only two or three blocks long, but wide enough to easily do a u-turn. And it was generally not used to get anywhere that wasn’t on that street. I would even describe that street as quite broad, while Broad St. in my own hometown is only broadish in comparison.

The house had been configured with an apartment upstairs at one time, so the rooms both upstairs and downstairs were not quite normal. The dining room had been a bedroom, so it was closed in and not large. But the living room was actually double, and directly below what was basically my grandparents’ double bedroom. The attic had stairs and was somewhat finished, and my grandmother never called it an attic, but always “the third floor”. The basement was also somewhat finished, with rooms where she kept canned goods–mostly grape jelly and peach halves, as I recall. And in the middle of the basement was a pool table which was usually covered by special plywood sheets to turn it into a ping pong table.

Of course, this week’s word is “broadish”, which means “rather broad” (am I the only one who hears that in a British accent?). Pretty obvious meaning, even if it’s not a particularly commonly used word. Though sticking “ish” at the end of a word, or even a sentence is pretty popular right now. “We hit traffic on the way, so it took us longer than expected. Ish.” It has a tempering effect. “I wouldn’t say your voice is loud, but it is loud-ish.”

When I saw the word, “broadish”, I thought of the broadness of my grandparent’s street, and I was reminded of their house where they lived most of their lives. I have many, many fond memories of that house on that street. Maybe the street didn’t need to be so broad for the memories to be good, but my memories are definitely impacted by it.