Highly Commended: My Grandma – A Short Story by Josie Gibson

Category A: Secondary School (12 to 14 years) Highly Commended (2024), Golden Tales Short Story Competition
Author: Josie Gibson

I watch as her fingers grace each key, her eyes fixed on the sheet of music. The paper is weak and old, but she remembers playing the piece like it was yesterday. The scribbled pencil marks across the page are in Spanish, from when she lived in Uruguay. I remember the stories she has told me, of bike rides through the fields of endless wattle trees of South America. I watch as she recalls each note as if she was still on the ship to England. As she sits, music radiating from her piano, she is no longer here in Melbourne.

She’s on the cruise to England from South America. She’s eight years old again, people watching from a distance as she plays the same piece she has always played, the one she learned from her Colombian music teacher. The Argentinian tune makes everyone stop and listen, it makes her feel like the song is carved into her bones, something that’s always been there. A memory from a distant time which has come alive again. With a final note, she smiles, the past and present blending seamlessly as the applause surrounds her.