grannie

Grannie turned 80 this week. To commemorate the event, here is a story I wrote my freshman year of college when my class was given the assignment of writing a story based off an interview with a family member.

My Grandmother is More Interesting Than Julie Andrews

            I couldn’t think of what to ask her. As a creative writing professor, my Dad always tried to give me helpful hints when I couldn’t find a story. Today he was helping me figure out what to talk to my grandmother about.

            “Make your opening sentence like a bumper sticker,” he informed me while unwrapping his Famous Star with cheese. “My grandma is blank. So what would you put there?” I shrugged and stared at the open packet of ranch dressing in front of me.

            “My grandma lived during the war,” Mom suggested.

            “Yeah, but a lot of grandparents did that.”

            “My grandma can beat up your grandma,” Dylan laughed, his mouthful of criss-cut fries.

Mom revised her statement. “My Grandma lived during the war in Belfast and she used to go on the rooftops with a flashlight…”
             I interrupted her. “That is ridiculously long for a bumper sticker.”

Her eyes squinted with concentration.  “Well didn’t she do that? You know on the roof tops…with a flashlight…was that her?”

Dad rubbed his eyes. “How should we know? You haven’t finished a sentence yet.”

Mom stared at the florescent lights above her head. “Didn’t she have perfect pitch and could hear the difference between the German and British planes? She would climb to the rooftop with a flashlight to warn all the women in the town that the Nazis were coming.”

It was my turn to rub my eyes. Now she was just getting ridiculous. “Are you sure that’s not from a movie?”

Her eyes were lowered back to earth. “Was that a movie? Oh- that was Julie Andrews!”

Dad couldn’t let this one get away.  “Wasn’t my mom that flying nanny? Hang on, that was Julie Andrews too.”

            “Well, they’re the same age aren’t they?” Mom pointed out, like that somehow excused her mistake.

I laughed at the absurdity of picturing my grandma clambering on the top of a rickety building, a weak flashlight in her thin hands, waving frantically in the blacked-out Belfast street. “Now there’s a bumper sticker: My grandma is Julie Andrews.”

                                                                                     #

            Mom followed me to the interview. I still had no idea what to ask. I sat down on the carpet cross-legged and set up my camera as Mom sat down on the couch next to Grannie, chatting easily about weight gain.

            “I’m putting on so much weight,” Grannie started as she crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap. “But at my age what should I care? I like to eat.”

I looked up at her from my spot on the floor. Her glasses focused on me suddenly. “Have you all your questions written down?”

I glanced down at my notebook and shrugged.

She smiled and ran her fingers through her soft, pale hair. “I won’t pretend you’re your little cousin. He calls me up every night, talking and talking and talking.” She extended her thumb and pinky finger next to her ear as a phone, closed her eyes and snored. She laughed and readjusted the long sleeves of her smoky blue blouse. “He’s so funny. Oh, he asks me if I’m going to take him to lunch Thursday. And I’ll say yes, and he’ll say okay, we’re going to McDonalds. How are you doing? What’s the man that lives with you doing? What did you have for dinner tonight? And you know what? That’s his favorite expression. And you know what?” She patted her collarbone with one hand as she laughed softly.

I looked down at my notebook again, embarrassed that my five year-old cousin had more questions for Grannie than I did. I still had no idea what to ask.

Mom shifted in her seat.  “So was it true that you could hear the difference between a German plane and a British plane by the sound?”

I leaned forward to hiss to Mom to let it go. When Grannie said “Yes.” I was startled.  “Wait. What?”

She smiled at my newfound interest. “Well we all could. It was the way the wings were built differently.” The war was the first thing she remembered. It started when she was three. Bombs. Air-raid shelters. Being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to the call of sirens. She talked about her school with only three teachers. How she had to drop out of school when she was fourteen to work full-time in a lawyer’s office. She spoke of her quiet, reserved mother and controlling father. How she met grandpa when she was thirteen and he was the twenty-three-year-old youth leader of her church. Her wedding, the YouTube videos grandpa’s best man sends to her at least five times a day. She told me how all three of her kids had the chicken pox twice. How my Dad had asked her for a boomerang once, and she broke apart a wood coat hanger and watched him from the kitchen window as he tried to get it to fly back to him. The time the family went to a zoo and an elephant grabbed my uncle by the sweater and lifted him into the air, Grannie tugging on the perambulator over her head. How my dad planted a twig from an apple tree in the backyard, and, when he wasn’t looking, she tied an apple to it with fishing wire and laughed, as he was too excited at his feat to eat it. On Easters, she used to spend hours pulling back the foil of hollow plastic eggs, and eating the candy inside before wrapping it all back together. Auntie Janette still had not forgiven her for this. Moving to America with the kids, a husband, no job, and no money. Just a prayer. The time she went to Tijuana and pushed over a pickpocket when she caught him trying to steal from her friend. The family trip to the beach where she saved a boy from drowning. The poltergeist nicknamed Herbie that used to haunt their house. Muddy footprints in the backyard, mysterious classical music playing from nowhere, a rabbit cage inexplicably jumping up and crashing down for ten minutes. The week she had to baby-sit me and I spread hand foot and mouth disease to anyone in a five-foot radius. Her recent trip to Africa where she got a first-hand account of the poverty and struggles of hard-working people.

            She stopped talking and looked down at her knee.

            “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “I wish I was more interesting.”