I watch her walk slowly to the chair, carefully sit down, and catch her breath. Her wrinkled hands grip the side of the couch; she looks up and asks, “Now what is all of this about interviewing me?” I laugh and take her hand and squeeze it lightly. She’s getting so old and fragile, and she forgets so easily. She’s my grandma, she is 89 years old, and I ask her about her dreams.
“My dreams?!” she says looking at me with the huge brown eyes, the same ones I have when I look in the mirror. She shakes her head and laughs. “Let me tell you something about my life,” she says, with certain sadness in her eyes. “My dreams, I knew, would never come true.” She starts off talking about her farm. When she was a little girl, her family was poor. They didn’t have much money and she always dreamed of being a singer. When I was little, I always heard her singing, but being little, I never noticed how amazingly beautiful it was. I didn’t appreciate it. She was about 17 when she met my grandpa. She had her youngest sons at 20 and they were sent off to the war and never came back. My dad was born in the middle out of 7 boys. She looked up at me with a solemn look in her eyes. “I never became a singer.” I squeezed her hand. “But you know what,” she said “I have all of these grandbabies and I’m happy to have you.” I looked up her and smiled. Her soft, wrinkly skin was soothing and I looked up and saw the beautiful picture of her when she was 21 and smiled.