My Grandmother’s Crackle

I love listening to my grandmother’s stories. Her voice crackles like a wooden fireplace and her hands tremble when she speaks. Every year her wrinkles get deeper and the crackles become more faint, as if the wood is losing more and more carbon and getting closer and closer to ash, and every year the stories change.

In my earliest memories, my grandma would read me Russian stories. My parents and I lived in her apartment in Kishinev. I clearly remember climbing onto her bed and into her lap, and her hand brushing across my head as she would read Kolobok to me. Kolobok is a story about a little yellow bun that two poor old people had made with the very last few bits of flour that they had. Just as they were going to bake it, it rolled off their window sill and had an excellent adventure where it evaded animals that wanted to eat it by singing them a song. Eventually, a sly fox tricked the bun into jumping in its mouth to sing the song, and CHOMP – the bun got eaten up for being gullible. I remember the CHOMP my grandma would make so vividly. She would always tickle me as she did it, and our laughs would blend into one. Her crackling, and mine high pitched.

As I grew older the stories changed. She stopped reading fictional stories by curious authors and started telling me the stories that she lived. The stories that created her wrinkles, and her voice’s crackling. She would tell me about how she met my grandfather, and she would smile, and her eyes would smile too.

When I got a bit older she told me about her childhood. She told me about the sirens that she heard when her family had to leave their home in Moldova. How her father had to stay back, and how her mother and infant brother fled in a carriage. How they had to leave everything they had. She told me about her little toy, and she would always get up and show me that she still has it. When she tells this story, her wrinkles seem to become the most deep, and her eyes well up with tears. Her voice doesn’t change though. It still crackles the same way.

There was only one story when her voice lost its crackle. When her tears that filled her eyes spilled over. When her voice trembled just like her fingers always do. I still love listening to my grandma. But at that moment we just cried together.