Personal Narrative: Black And White Photos

I flip through the pages of a broken binder; they make a satisfying sound, like the snick of grass as you move through it. It’s the sound I imagine papyrus scrolls might make as you crinkle and unfurl them. Crammed into the binder are layers of cursive handwriting and black and white photos. In a vagary of thought, I open to a photo I’ve looked at often. It’s a stoic family that is posed rigidly in their Sunday best. Mostly, I focus on the woman that dominates the top left corner. She’s tall and big boned with hair waved like a lays potato chip. Her lips are wide and stretched tight, like smiling didn’t happen often back then. The woman is my great grandmother, and though I try to find a resemblance in her, I come up with nothing. …show more content…
They were just bone covered in paper with blue lines running over them in crisscross patterns. I held those hands as she spoke to me. Our conversations followed a particular pattern: I would come in and sit on the bedside, take her dry hands in mine, and introduce myself. After a few minutes she would look back up at me and ask, “What’s your name?” and I would tell her again. She didn’t remember much, but what she did remember was enough to fill a book with emotion. She was forever stuck in time, waiting for her husband to come home from the war. There were several children at home, and she couldn’t take care of all of them by herself, or so she often told me. Sometimes, she asked if I’d received any letters from George yet, because he was due home any week now. I patted her paper hands and assured her with a nod and a stretched smile. In those moments I thought those hands were much more than paper stories, they were flesh and blood memories. Those hands were her legacy.

With my great grandmother as an example, I think about the legacy that I want to leave. In years to come, when my face is just another photo in a yellowing album, how will my family remember me? What can I say, or do, that will set me apart from other people? These are silly questions, I admit, but there is something so dominating about death. It encompasses your thoughts wholly, until you are forced …show more content…
I don’t want to be talked about as a liar, or grump. I want my family to truly love me when I die. The stories about my great grandmother are of sharp discipline and rigid structure. She was the kind of person who believed in wooden spoons and willow branches on bare flesh. Her children first learned to respect her, and then love her. I don’t want to deal so harshly with my own children. I think it imperative that children are given room to grow with love and understanding. My earliest memory of my mother is her teaching me to read. I think of her bent over me, pointing to the words and sounding them out in a low voice. Her eyes were always so intent on the words, like she would never have to eat again, the wonder of words filled her so completely. Those eyes were my great grandfather’s eyes, my grandfather’s eyes, and now my eyes, all the way from Switzerland. My eyes would struggled through the sounds of words with a determination to learn everything. Big O’s and little o’s formed quick rhythms in my mouth as easy as singing. I was an eager reader because my mother was. In everything, I followed her example with innocent trust. My mother loved to read Harry Potter, I devoured Harry Potter hungrily and dreamt of riding a broomstick every night for several weeks. She fed me Narnia and Charlotte’s Web every night before I went to sleep. However, my mother, before anything else, was an artist. I