Fifty Days of Gratitude: Days 6,7,8,&9

Now that the PNW is trying its hardest to give us more consecutive days without rain, I’ve been walking outside more often than I do in the winter.  I live very near the State Capital and the grounds just across the way are park-like in their beauty, which is an added incentive to walk it out.  Walk out the stress and the worry and the dread over difficulties real and imagined.  Walk out the disappointment and the discouragement and the disillusionment, because who doesn’t like some alliteration with their walkabout?

The other thing I enjoy while walking is listening to really good podcasts.  I appreciate very thoughtful content makers putting good podcasts out into the world.  (What do you listen to?) 

The other day, on one such podcast, the question was asked “If you could make a playdate with your childhood self, what would you do?”  My childhood was centered more around obligation and duty than wonder or curiosity. I didn’t play sports, so have long said that I wasn’t good at it.  Until I was twelve, I enjoyed dance classes, but when we moved away from the town where my aunt taught dance lessons, those ended.  I learned to play the piano, too, but the primary lesson that taught me was that with a half hour of practice every day, I could continue to grow in my work as a musician.  I’m not a natural at it. 

But if I were to make a play date with my five-year-old self, it would have to begin at my maternal grandparent’s home.  There I had an entire playroom to myself, in the unfinished basement of their modest two-bedroom home.  Out back there was a small flower bed that often gave up geodes, so I was encouraged to dig in the dirt to see what other treasures it might turn over to my eager hands.  Reading was a big part of those days – books in the recliner with my Papa and sitting next to my Nanny on the couch or in her lap in the armchair.  We would play the game I’d invented where I’d ask her if she would still have room in my lap for me when I was 10? 15? 20?  40?  And we would laugh and laugh but she always made sure to say that there was always room in her lap for me.  And there always was.  Papa would let me sit at his big important-looking desk and pretend to be a businessperson.  He would come in for a “meeting” with me.  I was always the boss.  And then we would make a pie, which would be our dessert at the dinner table.  That was followed by bath-time in their bathtub that always smelled of Dove soap.  And more cozy story time before bed. 

I realized, as I thought about this memory, that I’d not answered the question from the podcast, exactly.  I’d remembered what a best day from my childhood looked like, and in doing so, I’d invited my current self to return there.  Where the question of how old was too old for lap sitting was really a question of whether I would always be valued and loved by her.

  Because her love never came with conditions and that seemed unfathomable, even to my young heart.  I realized that my Papa, by letting me sit at his desk and be the boss, had instilled in me the notion that I was not limited by constraints that others put on me.  And pie.  Pie will always represent a bit of love – an extra helping of joy at the end of the day. 

Come to think of it, I would invite my grown-up self to remember just these things.  I lost my Papa when I was only seven years old, but his unrelenting adoration of me is the thing that gave me the self-esteem I would have as an adult.  Surely, if he thought me worthy of the boss’s chair, it must be so. 

I was so lucky to have my Nanny until I was in my fifties.  Dementia took pieces of her away from me, but never that love.  I always knew that there was a place in her lap, or at least next to it.  Even in the end of her days, the social worker where she lived would Skype us together once a week (this was before Zoom) and while she was confused by the technology, she always knew exactly who I was.  And we would talk about pie and love.

I keep photos of them both throughout our home.  I feel their absence as an ache and their presence as tender love.  My daughter often speaks of how she feels Nanny with her, in the strength and resilience she possesses.  One of the photos of Nanny is on a lower shelf of a bookcase.  Our grandgirl, early on, would wave when she’d toddle past it.  Now, she seeks it out, and knows that it’s her Nanny.  She goes and stands in front of it and waves and just looks at her – believing that there will always be room in my lap for her because Nanny always had room in her lap for me. 

For my Papa and my Nanny, dear, beloved, beautiful people, I give great thanks.

An early Easter with my Papa

I love this photo of Nanny lifting me up, for all that it represents.