Nana had a very simple life. She was hardly ever out, and she didn’t really need to be. She had her little corner of the world: her chair, her television, her fireplace, her cup of tea. The television murmuring, the fire glowing, the kettle always ready, Nana, happy. Because Nana had a telephone, a front door, and a big-ass family. Which meant the outside world had a routine of finding its way in. The telephone brought voices, news, gossip and stories, and the front door brought the rest. People arrived from the great big world outside and sat down in Nana’s little world. And Nana wanted to know everything. Where had you been? What were you doing now? What was next? Because when you finally came through that front door, she wasn’t interested in where you’d been. She was interested in where you were now. You could sit beside her for five minutes, tell her about your life, and she was happy. Nana loved hearing about people living. And perhaps that’s why her little life was never really little at all. Her walls were never boundaries. They were more like the walls of a little harbour, where everyone could come in from the wild weather of the outside world, drop anchor for a while, have a cup of tea, tell Nana what had happened, and then sail off again. She had us. We went places. We changed jobs. We fell in love. We had babies and pets. We made terrible decisions. We fucked things up. We figured things out. We grew older. And somehow, all of it travelled back to Nana. Through the telephone, through the front door, across the carpet and into her little world. She never really offered advice. She listened. And every now and then you’d get an “Oh my God.” She let people be people and make their own strange journeys. And when they came home, she was there. Maybe that was the magic of Nana’s little home. It wasn’t really a small world, it was a window into a very big one. For 95 years, Nana stayed home and somehow, home became where the whole family came back to.