When the clouds weigh down the sky, and the winds blow the shirt off of you, and the only thing holding your hair on your head or the eyelashes on your eyes is mere will power, the mood tends to go awry, too. But as humans are supposed to be driven by reason, not by first tendencies…we strive to alter our mood and be civil.
I was taught since early childhood that one doesn’t react to the present until the events have been processed through the filters of the past and future circumstances. I remember my great-grandmother’s face, framed by the soft, white hair that she always wore in a long braid, as she laid the clearest baby blue gaze on me. It felt like being wrapped in pure morning sky. Solemn, brisk, warm and safe. Her lessons were never taught…for some reason I would begin to listen to her words, and it all seemed a story, yet at the end of it I’d feel my life had changed a bit more…never knew how she did it…never seen anyone able to speak into one’s mind quite like her either…I can’t remember the actual lessons either, but I can clearly say how I felt after each one, and how the feeling followed me throughout my life! Talk about great educators! Her quest to train me was obvious in how she treated me, always with a little reverence, and lots of intransigence that was never stern or overbearing. I fact she is the only person I knew who never had to raise her voice in a loud conversation, and always got the right of way…she called me her blue child…
I looked it up many years later, when missing her was more than just a feeling. It has quite the interesting twist, that, frankly, I don’t see in myself. But I always lean on her words when what comes to me weighs me down…There’s always yesterday, she used to tell me…look back. The answer is there, in you, in your past, in the people who were there beside you since the beginning.
I guess at some point I was expected to grow and tend to myself, and maybe raise my blue child the same way…and I hope I am making her proud, after all, I am using her lessons in my own way, not as baby blue gazed as she did, but the thought is there, and so is she, alive and bright in my memory, guiding my steps with a quiet nod, as always…
Here’s to great yesterdays and the people that were put in our lives to steer us! Here’s yesterday’s sunset to brighten today’s storm! Literally!
Nothing like Grandmothers! Sounds like yours was very wise.
Angie
Thank you again. I just hope that now that I am in my 8th decade, I have had the same influence for good.
Of course you had! Your blog alone is richer in values than a lot of people’s entire lives!
That is awfully kind of you to say.
It’s also true
Sounds like you had a wonderful relationship with our grandmother. (and the picture is quite lovely)
great-grandmother…yes, she was an amazing person!