My grandmother was a talker. She'd tell the same stories at every holiday gathering — the one about meeting my grandfather at the dance, the one about the blizzard of '78, the one about the time the dog ate the Thanksgiving turkey. We knew them by heart. We could mouth the punchlines.
So when she turned 84, I thought I had a pretty complete picture of who she was. I was wrong.
The story I'd never heard
It came out during a phone call. I'd asked her a simple question — something like, "What was the hardest year of your life?" — and she went quiet for a moment. Then she started talking about 1962.
She told me about a job she'd had before she married my grandfather. An accounting position at a firm downtown. She was the only woman in the office, and she was good at it. Really good. She talked about the feeling of walking into that building every morning, the click of her heels on the marble floor, the way she'd solve problems that stumped the men around her.
Then she told me she quit when she got engaged, because that's what women did. And in her voice — in the pause before she said "that's what we did" — I heard something I'd never heard from her before. Not regret, exactly. More like a door she'd closed a long time ago, opening just a crack.
The stories behind the stories
That one conversation changed how I understood my grandmother. The woman who made pot roast every Sunday and kept butterscotch candies in her purse was also someone who'd given up a career she loved because the world told her to. She'd made peace with it — mostly — but the story was still there, waiting for someone to ask.
I started calling her more after that. Not with a list of questions — just with curiosity. And the stories kept coming. The summer she hitchhiked to California with her sister. The letter she wrote to JFK that she never mailed. The time she seriously considered leaving my grandfather and didn't.
None of these were in the holiday rotation. They were too complicated, too personal, too real. But they were the stories that made her her.
What I wish I'd done differently
My grandmother passed away two years ago. I have some of those phone calls recorded — not all of them, but some. And I listen to them sometimes. Not for the stories, though those are precious. For her voice. The way she'd say "well, anyway" when a story got too emotional. The little laugh she'd do when she surprised herself by remembering something.
I wish I'd started recording sooner. Not because I needed a perfect archive, but because memory is imperfect. I can feel the details of those unrecorded conversations starting to blur already. The ones I captured? Those are crystal clear. Her voice. Her words. Her pauses. All exactly as they were.
The point isn't the recording
The point is the asking. The recording is just insurance — a way to make sure that when someone asks you about your grandmother in twenty years, you can play them her voice instead of paraphrasing her stories from fading memory.
If you have a parent or grandparent who's still here, still talking, still remembering — call them. Ask them something real. And if you can, press record.