Elegant

March 5, 2021November 5, 2021 / Fran Haley / 45 Comments

We are playing a game of hide-and-seek according to her rules, which means that if she can’t find me in approximately twenty-five seconds, she begins calling “Yoo-hoooo,” expecting me to echo.

She sends me out of a room to count while she stays in to hide. I have to pretend I can’t see her sock-toes at the crack of the closet door. She hides in the same place twice.

On her way to find me (I am sandwiched sideways between the bedroom dresser and the bookcase), she stops to retrieve my old hat which is lying on the trunk at the foot of the bed for a bit of vintage-y atmosphere. She plops it on her head. “Yoo-hoooo!” she calls.

“Yoo-hoooo,” I answer.

She whirls around. “There you are!” she shouts, hopping with glee. Then she regains her composure, asserts her authority: “Now, whoever is LOOKING has to wear this hat.”

“Okay, but first let me take your picture wearing it. You are SO elegant.”

“No.” She bows her head, hiding her beautiful face.

“Oh, please? It would be the best picture.”

She has to tease me a bit, evading the camera. She’s calling the shots. She flops around the edge of the bed, giggling.

Finally she stands and lets me get my shot.

Quick look. Can’t help myself: I crack up. “Ummm…how about I get one more? An even better one?”

“Let me see,” says the little grande dame.

I show her the photo on my phone.

“Nope,” she declares, “it’s a keeper! Now you count and I hide—your turn to wear the hat!” She flings it in my direction and scurries away.

I don my old hat and count…every precious, precocious minute, for the hidden elegance thereunto.

—Is she five or fifteen?

An etheree, for my “elegant” granddaughter:

You.
Seeking
your own way
in your own play
—let me now preserve
your essence for lighting
the remainder of my days,
hoarding every fleeting moment
in the reliquary of my soul
where dust cannot corrupt the elegance.

*******

The annual Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers is underway, meaning that I am posting every day in the month of March. This marks my fifth consecutive year and I’m experimenting with an abecedarian approach: On Day 5, I am writing around a word beginning with letter e. Another favorite e-word in this piece: echo. And an etheree seemed to be called for.

Also shared with the Poetry Friday gathering today – thanks to Kathryn for hosting the Roundup.

Toothless wonder

January 5, 2021November 5, 2021 / Fran Haley / 20 Comments

She said it was wiggly.

But how? She just turned five.

She has a vivid imagination. Fanciful.

We checked.

It was wiggly.

Oh my, we said. Soon you will lose it and—

I know, I know, she sighed, in her world-weary sixteen-year-old-five-year-old way. You put it under your pillow and the tooth fairy brings you cash.

—Priceless.

My new name

March 2, 2020November 5, 2021 / Fran Haley / 30 Comments

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…

—Shakespeare, As You Like It

Life’s transitions tend to sneak up on us.

For example, when it dawned on my oldest son that high school wouldn’t last forever and beyond it was college plus this thing called The Rest of Your Life, involving responsibility and duty, he looked at me with big brown eyes full of gloom: “I don’t want to grow up.”

Alas. It happens.

But he found his way. Last fall he simultaneously started the pastorate, married, and became the dad of a beautiful four-year-old girl. That’s a lot of transitions in one fell swoop, and he’s embracing them all. He’s thriving.

One man in his time plays many parts . . .

All of a sudden, his father and I have reached the grandparent stage of life. While it’s the loveliest transition, I can’t keep from thinking, with a pang, How did I become this old? Truth is, there’s exactly the same age difference between my grandmother and me as there is between me and my new granddaughter. It shouldn’t seem so astonishing.

The hardest transition isn’t mine, however. It’s my granddaughter’s. She loves to come over, loves to climb in my lap with a book as much as I loved climbing into my Grandma’s with one. All of this is glorious fun. No, the hard part is what to call me. She’s used to saying Miss Fran:

“Miss Fran, I’m hungry!”

“Oooo, Miss Fran, I like your nails. Can you paint mine?”

“Can we have a popcorn party and watch Frozen again, Miss Fran?”

“Let’s go outside and blow bubbles, Miss Fran!”

She likes telling everyone that I am her grandmother now. She even likes pretending to be me. My son said that after I broke my foot she went clomping around their house with one rain boot on, saying “I’m Miss Fran!” Yikes.

This transition away from Miss Fran has proved challenging. But she’s working on it.

The other night she asked me to spell words for her with magnets on a whiteboard. I did, without realizing that she intended to copy them with a marker.

Here she is, writing with utmost care. A message to me.

With my new name, for the new role I get to play in her life:

Franna.

Life just gets grander.