Traditional, old-fashioned and very satisfactory. My mother and father rented the little carriage house next to my paternal grandparents, where three of my four uncles, my grandmother’s sister and her son were still living. I could wander over, through the garden path, at will to be coddled, fed, amused, tickled and taught domestic skills.
My grandfather stabled two horses, kept two dogs and had a talking parrot in the basement. My grandmother had an enormous vegetable garden, a fruit orchard and a grape vine. She and my aunt turned out enormous meals nightly in an old-fashioned kitchen for at least 8 people.
She taught me how to knit, crochet, darn socks, make chopped liver, hand-wash the drops of a crystal chandelier, and hand-pick Japanese beetles from the roses.
This blissful arrangement lasted until I was four.