National Adult Literacy Database

August 13, 2012

The following story was written by Melita Carvery-Jackson, from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Melita is enrolled in literacy classes at the Captain William Spry Library Adult Learning Program.

My Grandmother

by Melita Carvery-Jackson

This is my Dad’s mother, so my grandmother. She is in her favourite place, the kitchen. Trevez, my grandson always looks at her picture and asks who that is. I say that it is Great Great Nanny Viola. She was my life. She was everything to me. She is the reason why I am the person I am today. She brought me up from when I was a baby to the time that I was ten. I was very spoiled. My cousins and family remind me of that even today. Her husband, my step grandfather, the only one I really knew, spoiled me too. He taught me how to ride my first bike. He took me to the Commons.

I used to play music on the wall with my hands in the kitchen. So I had a little set of bongos, a guitar, an organ and a fold up record player, like a suitcase to carry around.

Every month we would go to the bank and I would have to put my money there. She would sort out all the money into quarters and dimes. At Christmas time she used to make a pudding. It was so good, when you put the custard sauce on it. I can still smell it.

[This story was taken with permission, from Journeys: Yearbook 2012, pp. 39-40 – published by the Halifax Community Learning Network (HCLN).]