If Books Could Speak

We talk on the phone now, my granddaughter and me. This five-year-old girl who lives a zillion miles away in Virginia, this girl who I miss terribly, and her brothers too. I want to tell her everything to avoid in life, what friends to hang out with and that her heart will break and shatter more than once, the shards finding their way to Oregon piercing my own, and I won't be able to fix it. I won't tell you this, let's chat happy. She is not a telephone chatter by nature, much preferring talking in person, like asking for special dark chocolate hidden in my suitcase. Or chatting it up with friends outside. But cleverness pirated this Grandma's mind and I figured out a way to say I love you in person, me and her on Sunday eves. Thank you for Face Time and regulated bed-times for kindergartners. I capture her in bed now, telling her I love you, a bazillion miles away,

Reading books, our new love language. Words leaping across the vast separation, pictures dancing across the pages, caulking the missing spots, the longing, we share our mutual delight in stories. Focusing the cell phone screen, careful to point the phone just right, I read her words and my heartbeat thumps wild. It's like I'm that nine-year-old girl again dancing around the living room to the theme song from that TV show, Bonanza, the thrill of the music and Little Joe coming up soon. This all on Sunday night. My heart pirouettes with the memory and with granddaughter all blanketed in bed, nestling inside those precious virtual moments I say again I love you, with each flip of the page.

I pray you will love God long after I'm gone and you will remember our times on Sundays when you watched the stories unfold on the tiny screen, and you rubbed at your tired eyes, the lids they fall heavy and I love you a thousand different ways. The sleepy stars tucking you in, and I fold a corner just so, loving you a gazillion miles away and the stories they swirl around us, as we ready to say goodbye. 

Remember me, those pictures and words they speak, we coupled you two together when you lived so far apart. We tucked joy inside your aching, brought you snapshots of grace to carry inside your longing. We did this for you both, who live a trillion miles away.