Granddaughters

“I have watched you grow into someone braver than I was at your age. Wherever you go, you carry a little of me and a great deal of your own light.”

“There is a photograph of me holding your grandmother when she was the size you are. I have no idea where the years in between went. Nobody does. They just go.”

“I have watched this family grow for a very long time, and then there was you. You arrived at the far end of a story I started, and you made it better.”

“Your father was a great deal of trouble and I was far too busy to notice most of it. I am not busy now. That is the only reason I have seen everything you have done.”

“Your parents have to do the rules and the worrying and all of the hard talks. I get the kitchen table and the long afternoons and none of the lecturing.”

“I was never any good at the talking part and your grandmother always covered for me. She is not doing it this time. She told me to write it down myself, so here it is.”

“There are four generations between the start of this and you. I will not see most of what you do with it, and I am not worried about it at all.”

“I have watched you be told to be smaller and quieter more than once. Do not. I spent a great many years doing exactly that and it bought me nothing.”

“People keep asking whether I worry about what the world is going to be like for you. I have met you. I worry a good deal more about what the world is in for when you arrive.”

“People say you have my eyes and my stubborn streak, and they are right. You also got things that skipped me entirely, and I am very glad of it.”