Personal Narrative: A Family's Life

Of the living, you have one older brother, three older sisters, three younger brothers, and one younger sister. Your daily chores include doing dishes, gardening, haying, taking care of firewood, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of your younger siblings. You walk half a mile to school every day, no matter the weather, and are still in charge of getting your younger siblings to school. Your breakfast is oatmeal or toast, your lunch is a cold biscuit and peanut butter, and your dinner is usually potato or stale macaroni. For dessert, you get a sugar cake with no frosting. Without frosting, or peanut butter, it’s just flavorless dough with sugar flavoring and coconuts. You’d kill for some frosting. Your father will constantly remind you that …show more content…
Two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, Jason becomes a father; you become a grandmother at age 42. She is named Nichole Lyn Decker, a name you picked out in case you had a girl. She has his nose, which he gets from his father. She has her mother’s eyes, and dark eyelashes; she barely opens them for awhile, but you can see the Atlantic Ocean in them. You are angry because you only found out his girlfriend, Jaime, was pregnant two months ago. You are angry because Jason lied to your face for seven months, and hid the most important thing happening in his life. You’re disappointed because you told him to have safe sex, because nobody is really ready to have a child at nineteen. You know he doesn’t love Jaime anymore, and that will only hurt Nichole. You hate Jaime, and part of you hates Jason. But you will never hate Nichole, because you’re all she has. Her parents will split up, and your son will go into the Navy for six months before he is discharged under the category Adjustment Disorder. Jaime will decide that she’d rather party than be a mother. You will have her six out of seven nights a week until she is sixteen, which is when she finally moves in. You’ll be the one to take her to her first job, you’ll take her on her first date, you’ll be the first person she calls when she gets her drivers license. She’ll cry into your lap after her first heartbreak, she’ll jump into your arms when she gets her first college acceptance letter, and you’ll be the …show more content…
The top-half is off white and even her small chest is snug against the polyester. She notices a cake stain on the neckline, the one you’ve tried to remove countless times throughout the years. You two laugh about that. The skirt is light lavender, which is both of your favorite color. It’s tighter on her hips than it was yours, and appears shorter on her. You’ll tell her it’s a little too short, but she’ll just laugh and say it’s perfect anyway. She’s nineteen and in college; when you were nineteen, you were starting a family. You won’t see it because she closed her bedroom door to change, but her Atlantic Ocean blue eyes turned into the type of sky blue you can only see when you’re flying through the air. You see that she looks more like you than you ever noticed. You notice her eyes squint when she smiles, like yours. You notice you have the same smile, and your legs are the same