Grandmother Crawford
We were coming home from my Grandmother Crawford’s house on Bear Creek. As often happened during the summer I had just spent a fun week at her house on the far east part of the city and my parents had come to collect me. It was a Sunday night and traffic was sparse as we rounded past the huge steel yards that stretched for miles, giving way gradually to sparsely settled towns from there to our house near Annapolis.
Grandmother made her own root beer and she and Uncle Bud were kind, and loving. At their house I learned to swim, fish, bait bloodworms and other wild things. There were sea nettles, sunnies, perch, crabs and birds, so many birds. At age 8, let loose on her several acre property, I roamed far and wide, feeling free.
My Grandmother and her second husband, Uncle Bud, raised rabbits. I never wondered why. They just like rabbits, I must have thought. There were rows and rows of rabbit hutches with little bunnies inside, raised for food and slaughtered. Years later, I realized with a sharp ache that I not only didn’t want to think of others eating Uncle Bud’s freshly killed rabbits, but that I unconsciously identified with them.
There I learned to ride a bike, rode on the running board of Uncle Bud’s old truck and fed the rabbits. Grandmother swore by regular doses of Castor Oil for constipation. Every evening she’d approach me, heaping spoon in hand crooning num mummies,num mummies, as I searched in vain for an escape.
A small and lonely child, I was often lost in my own fantasies. I would go to bed some nights convincing myself that I would wake up as Superboy. I never did. But that didn’t dissuade me from trying it again the next night. I used to climb up on my dresser and dive fully prone onto my small bed. Perhaps I thought to remain airborne (I was always a magical thinker), or perhaps I simply stove to experience, briefly, the feeling of flying.
On that drive home I was tucked into the back passenger seat of our ’49 Mercury. We were pacing a big rig, and as I looked over at the driver he looked back at me. I threw him a furtive wave. He waved back. A warm jolt shot through me. I waved again. He waved back and so on and so on and so on. He never failed to return a wave. Our little play continued for a mile or so- it seemed a long time. Did the driver comprehend the lifeline he tossed to that small, sad child, who so longed to be seen?
This small selfless act of generosity and love, a rare gift for that young boy who held it a lifetime in memory, an act of Grace, an offering, a signpost: Keep going, Keep going.
Freely given this lovely moment meant Hope.
There is always Hope.