Learning to Love those Family Secrets

Photo by William Christen on Unsplash

Grammie asks me to promise I’ll never grow old, stroking my blonde hair reassuringly, as if I’m a reluctant dog. She tells me I remind her of her youth, but she doesn’t specify why. I know very little about Grandma Ivy’s early life, and even less about who she was when she was my age. When I was growing up, she would come from the East Coast to visit once every other year, and with her brightly dyed red hair, long glossy…