Juliet McDermott

No one approached storytelling quite like my grandmother. She read the beginning of books purely to understand the ending then returned to the middle if she was still curious about the intermediate happenings, or she read it all over again. Her car played the same audiobook on repeat, intervals of “What Alice Forgot” that amazed her even in their redundancy.

My grandmother adored predictability yet tended toward the dramatic, and her own stories reflected this paradox: rehearsed narratives that my extended family practically consecrated to memory. From her simple tales, I inherited a love of words along with her reverence for repetition.

She told stories while standing in our kitchen with her fingers precariously curled around a cup of black coffee, speaking over the monotone of her morning news. She repeated them while rolling our annual chocolate bûche de Noël cake, the tang of sugared cranberries against my tongue as I waited for her expected prompts.

“Have I ever mentioned this to you?” She would ask as the stand mixer whirred, flour snowing on her sleeves. Her memory was impeccable, but she asked these questions anyway as a preface. “Did I tell you what she said? Have you heard what happened when?”

I could have responded with a resounding yes to any of her imploring cues, but I would let her tell me again, even when I had each word memorized, complete with imitated traces of her charming Maine accent.

I predicted when she would call me by my cousin Katy’s name in the midst of her recollections, then reverse the names to their rightful order with a soft palm against her forehead. I anticipated when she would punctuate her narrative with the theatrics of a stunned gasp or widened eyes, and which of my witty remarks would elicit the reply, “Em, where did you come from?”

I’ll admit that her retellings sometimes became tedious. The preludes to her stories caused my mom and me to exchange affectionate eye rolls, subtle indications that we knew what was coming. Yet, we listened until their completion.

It was these slower, prosaic iterations that felt like the quiet tribulations of love. Anyone can be captivated by novelty and the unprecedented exhilaration of a new story, but who will stay when things settle into predictability, when it all becomes routine?

Love is not endless originality, the perpetual anticipation of newness. Instead, it is often the patience of “Yes, I know,” and “Yes, I know you,” and “Yes, tell me again.” Love exists between expectancy and repetition, in the unspoken agreement that some stories are worth hearing over and over again beyond the initial excitement.

Endearing exasperation was traced in the wrinkles near her eyes when she recounted arguments with my grandfather or scandals in her art club, reiterations of these stories softening her contempt. Her reflections on days of teaching middle school and watching my mom graduate from medical school held a wistful nostalgia.

I began to realize that her retellings were an act of returning to these sacred, predictable endings. By retelling, my grandmother reconciled the gap between past moments and her ever-changing realities, seeking continuity when she felt there was so little.

In the recent years without her, I’ve noticed myself doing the same with childhood anecdotes as the expanse between the two of us widens. The repetition of these stories holds her close.

“Yes, this is about the same grandmother,” I say, recalling the time she hid in a bathtub to avoid a petty fight or how she knit the violet bedside blanket in my college dorm room.

I ache with laughter as I retell our family absurdities to those who have already heard them. I silently thank them for reminiscing alongside me, the purest patience in their listening. Yes, this was the one who ran herself over with her car, then promptly went to a wedding, who was immersed in an hourslong scam phone call.

The one who whispered my name into a rosary each night, who shamelessly bragged about her grandchildren to grocery store cashiers, who made it feel okay for me to be young, who loved her sons-in-law as if they were her own children, whose voice I would do anything to hear again.

Have I told you this story before? I’ll tell you again.

Emma Landry is a member of the Class of 2029.