Dear Edna (on her 87th birthday),

You are the grandmother I never knew. My parents thought it would be cruel to name a baby girl born in the early 1980's "Edna". It seemed to have fit you though. So instead I carry a piece of your name and sometimes I feel like your second chance. I see you in all my imaginary memories in a small Brooklyn apartment smoking Pall Malls and drinking beer. I want to know why you didn't marry until thirty-one, was being single that awesome? I struggle with it - being single, that is. Sometimes I think I'm too much for these boys. I would love to know if you ever felt the same way. Could no man tame you until Grandpa came along? Was no other man strong enough to try? I want to know what your laugh sounded like - was it like mine? Loud gasps until you cry? I wonder if the woman I've become has anything to do with you. I wonder if when I drink and I smoke if that's got anything to do with you.

So many times, when I was a child we visited your grave, and I stood above your headstone looking down, I'd like to think you were doing the same for me. And if you are: Are you proud of me?

I heard you were a wonderful baker, told jokes that made the aunts blush. Lined up those tin soldiers in perfect rank and file. They say she wanted a granddaughter, a little girl. Here I am, the little girl of your little girl. None of this I'll ever really know, all I really have of you is a worn photograph - besides the fact they say we look alike. I don't know if that's true or not, but my mother certainly looks like you.

You are the grandmother I never knew - a stout woman in a blue dress at her daughter's wedding. Unsmiling, unassuming, with two years left on Earth. I finally found a picture of you smiling, there was a twinkle in your Irish eyes. I'd like to keep your image as the sepia-toned thick woman with a mass of dark hair, curled up and pinned back down. On the back an inscription - "Edna, Washington, D.C., 1949". I don't really understand why I'm so attached to you, to this imaginary image I created around other people's memories. I just think I would have liked to know you.

love,
your granddaughter