My Little Pola

From birth until I was almost five my grandmother lived with my parents and me. My grandmother, who was a Russian immigrant, spoke in her special accent. She had been in the country long enough to get a firm grasp on the English language, but, like most immigrants, she kept her accent for all to hear. Her sentences were not broken or fractured, just a little jumbled up. She would confuse herself of what order the words went. But, looking back now, I do not believe that it was because English was a second language.

The five years that my grandmother lived with my parents and me, she would babysit me every day when my parents were working; my father at a factory in Jackson, and my mother at a travel agency in McKenzie. From eight until five it was our time. My grandmother never read stories to me from a book. She would always tell the stories that her father told her, and she told her children. They were fairy tales, some Americanized and some were the original stories. I was told Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel along with less popular fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, all recounted by my grandmother, who added her own unique spin to the story.

I realize now that when my grandmother began to read from books, there was something wrong. She went from telling me stories from her memory to reading the same stories from books. She picked up new stores as well; my favorite was a story about an elephant. My grandmother read the elephant story to me so many times, I practically had it memorized. One story she never had to read from a book was a story about a baby polar bear. From this story she gave me the pet name “Pola.” It was a simple story about how a baby polar bear lost its way home and her journey home to her mo...

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...tal stay. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do for my grandmother, there was a inoperable tumor in her brain. The doctors sent her home with an IV of pain relievers and a lifetime expectancy of a few days.

Those last few days are a blur except for one event. While the family was buzzing around taking care of everything, I climbed into my grandmother’s bed, ready to read the elephant book. My grandmother was weak, but she smiled when I opened the book. I cannot say if I actually read the book or if I retold it from memory, but I recited the whole story from beginning to end to my grandmother. She was proud of me, she could not tell me, but I knew. At the end of that particular day, my grandmother passed away. But my grandmother showed me the magic that is contained in stories, and knowing that she loved stories gave me the drive to start reading.