It’s your Grandmother calling!

Dear Sweetheart,

I don’t know your name.

I don’t know what makes you laugh until your belly hurts, what you dream about when you close your eyes, or whether you like chocolate chip cookies better warm from the oven or straight from the jar. I don’t know what your favorite color is, what you’re afraid of, or what you hope you’ll become someday.

And that is one of the hardest things for a grandmother to say. For me to say.

Because somewhere along the way, a chapter of our story was written without me in it. Maybe I was never meant to know you. Maybe circumstances, choices, misunderstandings, or things beyond my control placed a distance between us. Maybe I have been intentionally kept from you. Maybe someday I’ll understand why.

But I have learned something about love.

Love doesn’t stop simply because you can’t reach the person you’re loving. Love only grows. Any now I find, the love that exists between you and me, that had nowhere to go, has finally found a place.

My darling, our love has grown so exponentially that now it encompasses everyone without a Grandma to call their own.

For every little one who has ever wondered what it would feel like to have a grandmother say, “I’m proud of you.”

For the child who needed someone to sit beside them and listen, to hold them and to just be near.

For the teenager who needed to hear, “You don’t have to have your whole life figured out yet.”

For the young adult who needed someone to remind them that making mistakes doesn’t make them a failure.

For everyone…

I see you. You matter!

You always have. So very much!

Perhaps I cannot be the grandmother sitting beside you at the kitchen table. I cannot reach across the room and tuck your hair behind your ear, slip a little money into your hand and tell you not to tell your parents, or give you one of those hugs that somehow makes everything feel a little less frightening.

Whatever brought you here, I hope you stay awhile.

Pull up a chair. I have something to say.

Stories. Lessons, Mistakes, Failures, Victories, Challenges, Laughter, Encouragements, Interpretations of the World around us…..

All of it……in little pages.

I love you my darling. Forever and always.

Until next time.

Your Grandma