Month: June 2020

Goodbye, Nana

I don’t remember being more excited about anything as a kid as I was about coming to visit you and Papa at Ridgeway Farm, whether it be for Thanksgiving or just Danielle and I getting dropped off for Nana & Papa’s ‘summer camp.’

There were markers along Co. road 678 signifying that we were close: the little white shoebox church with two symmetrical black doors; the country store with the swinging screen door and a Pepsi mural on one side of the building. I’m certain I remember pickled pigs feet in a jar on the counter though I always opted for candy when we would stop in.

And, I knew we were really close when the car wheels hit the gravel road. I can still close my eyes and see it all pass by the car window in my mind’s eye. There was a giddy excitement characterizing childhood that no longer comes to visit as an adult. Like all of the ‘last times when’, if only I knew the last time I felt that giddy knot in the pit of my stomach, maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more. Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to contain it as much as I did.

The totem pole would welcome us to the entrance of the farm. We would arrive at the ‘white house’ or later at the log cabin that Papa built with his own two hands, furnished with what I recall being almost entirely your handiwork: your quilts, your paintings, Papa’s woodworking… what ensued was pure, simple living and treasured memories I hope I never forget…

We’d start out the days shooting marbles or working those old Kellogg’s sliding tile puzzles I can only assume came in the cereal boxes. You’d take us into Lynchburg to the library to pick up books for our two week stay and I’d always pick up a stack of Archie comic books to read and re-read when I went through them all. We would wile away the hot Virginia afternoons splashing in the pool down the hill and then years later Papa taught me to dive in the pond.

With dinner time coming soon, waterlogged and worn out from swimming, we would come back to the house to help string beans and shuck corn from your garden. You tried to teach me to make the dinner rolls you served with every supper, but I never could quite pick it up. I tried, really I did, but they always turned out more like rocks. So, I would just look forward to having them when you made them, and I could always help. I would help roll out the dough, punch cup size circles out and fold them over to bake into imperfect, soft, buttery deliciousness. What I wouldn’t give for one of those rolls right now. We would have a big country dinner with those rolls around the kitchen table overlooked by framed Norman Rockwell prints and at the end of every meal, Papa would always lick his lips and like clockwork, he would purr, “mmm, good, mama, good.”

After dinner, we would scrape the dinner scraps into a bucket and hop on the back of the 4 wheeler with Papa to feed the pigs. With the sun sinking below the Virginia hills, the fireflies blinking over the fields and the crickets and frogs beginning their evening concert, we would head home to gather around the tv to watch HeeHaw and Papa would make popcorn on the stovetop. I still, to this day, only make popcorn on the stovetop. I’m convinced it tastes better that way.

These are only a smattering of the memories I hold dear in the almost 44 years I’ve been your granddaughter.

You left us today to return home after a life well lived, and I’m closing my eyes to travel down that old co. Rd 678 to visit you, to recapture that childlike excitement and to get a pat-pat hug from my Nana. Save me a dinner roll.

Birth Day

12 years ago at this very moment, I was less than 30 minutes away from meeting my first child.

I spent the entire night in a hotel room in Manteo, NC lying on a leather couch with a hotel towel for a blanket after the hospital discharged me and told me it could be another two weeks.

It was scary and agonizing, and I prayed like I had never prayed before.

After a long, sleepless night and certainty that I would die if this lasted for two more weeks, I strongly insisted that I be taken to the hospital again which may or may not have been accompanied by a slew of expletives.

It was a fairly short drive which couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes yet it felt like an eternity.

We pulled up to the front door of the emergency room, they made me fill out paperwork (again), put me on the elevator to the birth center, transferred me to a stretcher and the last thing I remember before I met Kaia was the nurse yelling “emergency delivery.”

She was born 7 minutes from the time that we rolled up to the sliding doors of the hospital.

Somewhat figuratively and many parts literally speaking, not much has changed over the last 12 years. It’s been uncharted territory, terrifying at times, maddening, utterly painful, and also a simply beautiful experience for which I am immensely grateful.

Happy birthday to my maddening, painful and simply beautiful first child, Kaia Madeline. You are my heart walking around outside my body.

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