Nancy Margaret
or just grandma to me - where do I begin to remember you, all you’ve been? do I start with your soft skin - those bright and kindly eyes your aged and crackly voice, asking us always to plant on each cheek and forehead - kisses three, your powdery nose and loose singlets, legs lying in the sun for vitamin d you said, and everyday in armchair or lounge or bed open books, folded newspapers the napkins up your sleeves - your tiny handwritten notes, the keenest, most hungry mind for news of the world you read everything - biography, philosophy, fiction and non, literature poetry, history, magazine old letters intended for you and others that weren’t, school notes and failed essays, a wealth of knowledge, a treasury of verse, story, song - the meaning of words the stories of others you felt the most, they made you cry - made you happiest the child who lived in the bush won a scholarship for school in the city, wrote and edited poetry, became a schoolteacher whose grandma rode past Ned Kelly whose father went to war, who married a farmer and had eight children birthed and breastfed and how many young minds you taught too - when we were children you came each summer with a full and musty suitcase sweeping us up in big hugs tucking us into bed we would request from your repertoire favoured stories, fables, poems - all the milestones you shared, our first walks, words, school concerts - then as teenagers, you came to live with us - in my room and then by the dining room table your movements were slow and strained but your mind as sharp as ever, how you loved the bustle of a full house all our comings and goings - and in the early dark of morning, a voice asking who’s there? you the tea drinker, liberally with milk - teabags stretched for three cups, lashings of butter, we knew the gifts you liked to eat dark chocolate, crystallised ginger, marzipan, peppermints - sardines on toast, cheese and beetroot, the time you taught me to eat nasturtium leaves, your faith that weathered decades of experience and loss, unshakeable, in a loving God - we counted on our fingers forty-one people have come into being because of you, you were not perfect but you were as much as a person can be - a capable woman, a generous mother a great teacher a wise listener a miraculous storyteller - and even in your last years a source of interest, faithfulness, remembrance the older fragile you barely moving, with my own red-haired boy who helped pop green peas in your mouth, who kissed your hand and ran cars along your bed I like him, you said, and smiled and on my last visit the mind that remembered the chickens we keep the days until they lay the porridge that came late you were lively, gripping my hands with papery skin so soft - those kindly eyes thank you for visiting you said, thank you for all you gave me a love for words to read and write and recite aloud to soak in sunshine and watch the seasons, to treasure hope, and care for kin - and above all, the gift of life - you gave to me my mum.
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ABOUT the authorEmily Clare Sims is a farmer and mama to three young boys. Each day she looks for ways to notice beauty, contemplate her faith and savour the seasons... Categories
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December 2022
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