My Grandma's Hands

I was daydreaming yesterday.  I imagined myself and Devin, sitting on our porch on a warm evening, maybe in early October.  We'd have those rocking chairs I've always coveted that you can get at Cracker Barrel.  I don't think we would talk much, enjoying that silence more profound than any words mankind has discovered.

I imagine what I would look like, in this daydream as I sit on the porch in early October.  Years have passed, and with them the colors of my clothing have faded into soft pastels and muted beiges.  The cuts of the fabric have blurred, not so distinct, not so sharp but wavy and curvy and making it sort of indistinguishable where one part of my body starts and another ends.  All of me, transformed through the years into one soft lump of pink and cream.

I think Devin and I revel in the silence, but our hearts quicken as we hear the sound of cars coming around the corner that we still live on.  The cars come into view around the bend and we see the faces inside we've been waiting to see.  Smiles echoed in multiples by the wrinkles on our faces brighten up the autumn dusk.  Our daughters, all grown up with families of their own, come to visit us.

They step out of their cars, each of them about my height, each of them so beautiful in the people they've become it makes my heart ache with pride - not for my mothering skills, but that they managed to become these people in spite of me.  Their husbands step out of the cars, and I imagine that I am a tiny bit in love with each of them, as if they were my own handsome sons.

The babies are next out of the cars - these would be my grandbabies.  And suddenly, the peaceful quiet evening Devin and I had been enjoying is over and the world once more becomes color and sound and explosions of energy bursting and darting and shimmering in our tired eyes.  But oh, how sweet each face is, how sweet and perfect and kissable and they belong to me, I am grandma.  I am the keeper of cookies and the teller of stories and the kisser of boo boos and the singer of songs and the drier of tears and the maker of smiles.

I will be my Grandpa Homer, teaching my grandchildren how to plant seeds and weed a garden.

I will be my Grandma Homer, teaching them how to can tomatoes and apples and pears.

We will eat pie after every meal.

I will be my Grandpa Boling, with the only clear memory I have of him being when he pretended to cut off his thumb under a napkin in a restaurant, but I knew he couldn't really have done it because of the twinkle in his eyes and the smile hiding in his cheeks.

I will be my Grandma Boling, and make everything pretty and have an aura of calmness that permeates the air around me.

We will eat cookies after every meal.

picture from lds.org image library

Sometimes when I look at my hands I can see how they will look someday the way my Grandma Boling's hands look now.  I always smile when I notice it, smile to think that I have hands like hers.

I know that I am romanticizing a lot of what it will be like, that I am overlooking the pains and aches of a body beginning to tire.  I know I am, but that's what makes this a daydream.  I look forward to it anyway.  I can feel the years between now and the time this daydream becomes a reality stretching out long before me, and I feel homesick for it, even though it hasn't happened yet.

And then even though it feels like they are stretching out so interminably long before me, I know that it will happen like waking from a dream, what you thought was forever was just the blink of an eye.

I am here, I am right now.  I am today, and tomorrow and the day after that and these days seem endless but they all add up to become this daydream, and it won't be so long in coming as it feels.