Writing for an audience beyond where you might ever go is a change for this writer. My words are normally timely. Of the moment. Sharing my truths be it from memory, mind, soul, or all of the above. I am a storyteller that stays in the story even when I try to step out of the story. This storyteller tells his story, others’ stories, wishful tales, dark sagas, hopeful yarns, emotional rants, and whatever the voices in my head say to share. The target audience is whoever needs and reads the words. What I write is for them even when I am not sure who they are or why they need it.
Today’s writing is a bit different. It is for someone I know right now. Yet it is for her later. Much later. When she is grown up and might wonder who that Pop-Pop guy really was. Much later. When she is as adult as her Mom and Dad are right now and they are where I am in the way of kids having kids and time marching onto wherever it beats second by second. This writing is different because it is for Gracie as she will be. Way up there beyond what I can see and even expect to see.
So it has an echo-y feel to it. Like I saying it from someplace else. Someplace that will have her hear me but feel her. Feel her as I know her now and as she knows herself in the fragmented memory that is our own knowledge of what we were when we were two years old.
She likely will not remember how grown up she was at two years old. She gave me looks that said she understood stuff she just could not understand at that age. She was a sage. She went from silent observer to not so silent observer in just a year. She is fully present in a way that amazes me. I see ancient wisdom in her eyes. She crosses time and space and says “I get it”. She comforts me each time I look in her eyes. Gracie is pensive as Elders are. She contemplates and shows understanding far beyond her years. Gracie is, fittingly, graceful and dignified. All that……at two years old.
Every so often, she becomes a kid again. I think she does that for my benefit. To remind me that whatever gifts we have, they are improved by living life as we are supposed to when we are supposed to. She is a kid because she is two years old. She is much more because she is much more and always will be.
Someday she will read this. Maybe. I think so. I hope so. Because I want her to know I saw her for what she was as well as what she will be. She is Grace. She is Hope. Just like kids and grandkids are supposed to be. They are why tomorrow matters so much. Gracie already knows that. I got to see it first hand.
Happy Birthday, Gracie.
I love you, Pop-Pop
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