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.”
