Narrative Essay

"Hello," I stated as I hopped through the door to my grandparent's home without even a knock. My grandma looked up from the book she was reading in her cozy corner chair, "Well, hello there"

"Where is grandpa?" I asked as I leaned down to brush my lips across the soft wrinkled cheek of my elderly grandma.

"Who's there?" a familiar deep, rough voice sounded from the next room.

Smiling I skipped through the kitchen and into a long dimly lit room filled with bookcases, couches, a dining room table and a grand piano. My grandpa, across the room, was surrounded by music stands and piles of sheet music. His trusty violin was in one hand and the long wooden bow with the horse hair strings, that I was always warned never to touch, was in the other.

As I walked toward the figure across the room, I noticed his full head of snowy white hair glowing in the dark room. Over his short stocky body hung a green dress shirt and a fuzzy cardigan sweater. He wore slacks held up awkwardly by a belt allowing his small potbelly to hang over it. His face hardly showed the years of worry and stress, but his white bushy eyebrows and growing second chin showed his old age. His smile greeted me. As I drew close to him, his aging arms reached out and wrapped around my body pulling me into a warm loving hug.

As he released me from the hug, I said, "Grandpa, I learned a new song I want you to hear."

I plopped down on the hard piano bench, and my fingers flowed over the keys. My foot pumped the cold pedal, and the room was magically filled with tones, one after another slowly warming the room. Looking up at my grandfather's soft, blue eyes I saw him crack a smile and nod with encouragement. Soon his violin found its way to its familiar spot between my grandpa's shoulder and his unshaven chin. He swayed slightly as his arm moved the bow across the strings of the violin producing a harmony to the melody I was performing.

With a long last note, we both dropped our hands to our sides allowing the music, which had just filled the room with its thick tone, to abruptly end. The room was left in a dead silence, frozen for a brief period of time, as we recovered from the intensity of the piece.