And though I have managed to blur my memory of most family events, some stand out. My Great-Aunt Florence's 91st birthday comes to mind: We are gathered around the dining room table, waiting for Auntie (in the picture's background) to cut her birthday cake. But it remains in one piece while she holds court. She is telling us about how 6-year-old Florence liked to sing herself to sleep with a Finnish lullaby about the Titanic, how she discovered that her "perky bustline" was a thing of the past, the time she got kicked out of Aldi's grocery store for fighting with another shopper who was "fondling" the French bread, and how the waitress at the Nugget "went the limit" on her date last night.
Auntie was starting in on the wastefulness of teabag strings, when my grandmother leaned over and whispered to me, "That dame never shuts up!"
Until then, I had never heard anyone use the word, "dame" in real life.
Twenty years later, Auntie's birthday party is still vivid in my mind.
Grant application narratives can become lost in a blur of applicant information when foundation staffs evaluate mass quantities of funding requests. In your effort to write a typo-free narrative, double-check your attachments, etc. don't forget the stories that show the soul of your organization and make your application stand out from the rest. #grantnarratives
