Personal Narrative: Bigger Than Me

Bigger Than Me

I sat at the window waiting for Grandma to arrive. Then my mom requested me to come to the kitchen for assistance on the cookies. I ran to her side wanting to help with the sampling before my grandparents arrived. She handed me a cookie and began giving me her talk on my performance of manners in front of others. I never gave attention to her lectures they just told me things I already knew, so I stared off into the distance. I pictured my grandparents greeting me with a big hug and handing me the past two weeks of comics from their newspaper. I like to read the newspaper comics; they make me chuckle and jump with delight. My mother and I always read the comics together at night on the couch by a raging fire. I sit next to her …show more content…
Her sister, my aunt, never liked my mom and thought of her as a pest. She eventually got so tired of my mom that she promised to never see her again. They haven’t seen each other since. I’ve never met her and she has never met me. I wish she would come visit us; I would like to know her. I wish she would walk through the door and yell, “I’m here, sorry for the wait”. Then all of a sudden the door opened I ran, hoping for a chance it would be my aunt only to see my Grandma; I sighed. She came in as a bundle of joy, rejoicing and laughing as she tackled me in a hug. She began telling me about her trip and how the security officer had pulled her bag aside and took her sunscreen from her. I laughed at the thought of a police officer preforming this action. She then brought my attention to a ticket in her left hand. On it said “The sad rebirth of World War II”. It was decorated with warplanes, boats, and soldiers. I grabbed it from her hand and looked at it. She explained that we would be going to Poland on a train that used to be used as Hitler’s train in World War II. We …show more content…
We hopped off the train only to jump onto the hard, cold, fear filled dirt. I looked ahead seeing only small building and a barb wired fence. Curiously, I asked my mom where we were. She responded with a falling tear and two words, “Concentration Camp”. I was curious towards these two words not understanding what they meant. I saw the waiters cowering inside the train as if they were playing hide and seek. It reminded me of childhood games of hide and seek in the house. The tour guide gathered our attention and took us through the gate leading inside. On the jagged arc, I read “Arbeit Macht Frei”. I had learned a bit of German from my Grandfather who translated it out loud next to me, “Work Sets You Free”. He had learned seven languages while growing up; he was a genius. I wondered what they meant by that and began envisioning many people doing yard work within these gates. I chuckled at my humorous sense of imagination. I regretted it the moment I did so while everyone looked at me with confusion, strictness, and fury. I received a sense of serious behavior and sadness in the air around me. It smelled bad like dead animals and rotten food surrounded me. Our tour guide took us into one of the buildings. It was filled with stone ovens like the ones you sometimes see at pizza restaurants. Underneath them, there were ashes and a few bones. I shivered in fear trying to reassure