I Would Have Dinner with Grandmother LeGrand by Georgia

I Would Have Dinner with Grandmother LeGrand by Georgia - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

My family has always been full of large personalities. Dinners together were never really dinners, more like competitions to see who could make themselves heard over everyone else while food sat in the middle of the table. And yet, no one ever felt ignored. Even if we weren’t heard right that second, at some point, our turn would come. At some point during the evening, our story had a chance to be told.
Stories were the life blood of our family. The stories, the memories were more important than the keepsakes. We delighted in sharing embarrassing stories, laughing or crying depending on whether they were about someone else, or ourselves. There were some we could only tell when the subject wasn’t in the room, stories we were never supposed to know in the first place. Even more important were the stories that were meant to protect, to preserve what was no longer there. Those stories held the actions, the words, the spirits of those who had left us.
I never met my Great Grandmother LeGrand. She died three days before I was born. My grandfather, Papa, jokes with a far off look in his eyes that she died so much later than she was meant to, and I came so much earlier than I was supposed to, because we were so desperate to meet. Too bad we just missed each other. “After all,” he says, “she loved babies, and you love being spoiled. You would have done well together. At least until she realized you inherited her stubborn streak, you little knuckle head.” At that point, I’d get a knuckle in my head.
They all told stories about her. At least one, whenever we sat down. Even Spencer, a cousin five years older than I, had a few to tell. It didn’t matter where we were, by the fire, at the table, in the car. One only had to say “Grandmother LeGrand” and everyone would sit up a little straighter, get a little quieter, as though the mere memory of her was still telling them how they should behave. I loved hearing her stories. They became her stories, I suppose, because she invariably had more personality than the one telling them, no matter who it was. I listened in contentment as they told me about the contest between village men. There was a bet going on between them, trying to see who could throw an eighty pound ball over their shoulder. Grandmother LeGrand stalked up, threw it over her shoulder, and then told them all off for gambling. I sat on the edge of my seat as I listened to the tale of an eighty year old woman, recovering from open heart surgery, climbing over her garden wall because her daughter was taking too long to get it unlocked.
I was enthralled by her, more so than I ever was by any historical figures I was taught about in class. Her stories were the ones imprinted on my mind, behind my eyes. I was fascinated by the sense of kinship I felt, the absence of the love I should have been able to feel and should have had the chance to express. And more than anything, I’m haunted by the stories she would have been able to tell, if she had been at our family dinners.