Sample Narrative Essay

Sample Narrative Essay
Granny
As I glanced past the lit Christmas tree in the window, I could see endless rain pouring down and splashing into the large puddles that now filled the road outside my grandparents’ home. I shivered slightly and turned back to watch my grandmother sharpening her pencils with a razor blade and unpacking her watercolor paints and paintbrushes from their special travel box. She was wearing a loose lambswool cardigan that covered the top of her long, gently patterned skirt. Her lightly permed white hair was combed carefully across her head. I moved from the sofa to stand closer to her armchair and watched her rearrange the flower bouquet that she was commissioned to paint for her neighbor. I could smell a mix of the familiar waft of her Chanel N°5 perfume and the gentle but evident odor of her watercolors, but I couldn’t pick out any flowery smells. I looked at the painting, which was nearly complete, and saw her penciled signature at the bottom. It read “B.E. Cartwright” in beautiful printing. The “B.E.” stood for Barbara Eileen, although everyone called her Bobby.
I moved back over to where I had been sitting, in front of the lightweight set of drawers that I was using as a hospital-on-wheels for my stuffed animals and dolls. Before settling down to her painting, Granny had cleared out the drawers for me and helped me wrap my little animals in the dry washcloths that I used as bandages and slings. I cradled my teddy bear, who suffered from a broken leg, in my arms and sang it a lullaby. My dulcet tones clashed somewhat with the Christmas carols that Granny had playing on her little portable boom box. She looked up from her painting, not to tell me to stop singing, but to ask how long I thought that Teddy’s recovery would take. I answered that he was looking a lot better and would be able to leave the hospital soon. After expressing her great relief at this news, she pushed her little painting table away from her armchair and went into the kitchen to refill her teacup.
“Would you like anything, Tasha?” she asked me.
“Hmm,” I thought for a moment. “May I please have some chocolate milk?”
She got out the Nesquik powder and milk, fresh from the milkman that morning, and began with great care to mix the powder with a fork into a little bit of milk. She always started it like this to ensure that the drink had no lumps of powder in it, and then added the rest of the milk to make it exactly as I liked it. She came back into the living room and put my drink on the coffee table for me, watching kindly as I checked my dolly’s temperature. I placed my doll back into the blue, soft bed that Granny had made for him last summer and picked up my drink to sip whilst I watched Granny work.
As I watched, my mind drifted to think of my favorite of her paintings, one she had done as a study in preparation for a scene she was commissioned to paint. It was a picture of pigs in a farmyard, and the study was only half finished, so that the piglets in it were colored and the background was not. A few months before, I had seen it and told her I liked it, so she gave it to me, and it now hung on my wall at home.
I watched closely as Granny finished the subtle coloring of the flower petals and absentmindedly dipped her brush into her cup of tea and lifted her paint water to her mouth, realizing her mistake just before the murky liquid touched her lips. Granny laughed quietly and started to talk about the next trip that she and Papa, our grandpa, were planning to make to the Dales, their favorite part of the north of England. They went quite often with the art club to which Granny belonged, as it was such a beautiful area and had many picturesque scenes to paint. She could see that this was perhaps not the most interesting topic for a seven-year-old, so she turned the rather one-sided conversation to their next visit to see us in Germany. This grabbed my attention much more, and we began to talk excitedly about exactly what we would do when they came and which ones of her collection of teddy bears I wanted her to bring. I, of course, gave her a long list of English chips and chocolates that I hoped they might bring with them for us.
Just as I had listed all of the necessities I could think of, Papa, Mummy, Daddy, and my brother, Brian, and sister, Cece, came back from shopping, soaking wet and in need of a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Granny went to top up the pot while they hurried to change into some dry clothes. Meanwhile, I packed up my little hospital until another day.