Can I tell you a story? It’s one with deep roots that reaches across several state lines, spans a couple generations, and connects the present with yesteryear as if there were no moments between the two. It begins with my maternal grandmother, Grandma Rushing.
Grandma Rushing came to live in my home state of Louisiana as a newlywed, transplanted from the hills of Kentucky. Neither she nor my grandpa, Claude Rushing, had much formal education to speak of, but they abounded in other traits that served them just as well, if not better, as they struggled to raise a family in the early days after the Great Depression. Claude and Ola Mae Rushing knew how to work hard, use little, and save a lot.
I never tired of hearing Grandma tell stories. My imagination filled in the details as she talked about how she and Papaw Claude had set up housekeeping in a tent when they first came to the Delta. By the time she was recounting this trivia, the two of us were sitting in the small project house where they raised 10 kids of their own and took in a couple more that weren’t theirs but needed loving. Grandma would gesture to the floor as she told me how she had gathered sticks from the yard, made a broom, and swept the dirt beneath that tent day after day until it was as hard and clean as the linoleum under our feet. Many a time I would hear snatches of adult conversation and smile when I heard people say my grandma was sharp, sharp as a tack. I remember liking the sound of those words, even then.
Grandma was pleased when I learned to read, but when I fell head over heels in love with the magic of words a bond formed between the two of us unlike anything the rest of the family shared. Nothing pleased my grandmother more than finding me reading a book, and I made her plenty happy because I devoured them as fast as I could get my hands on ’em.
It was the early ’70s when Grandma lit a fire under my dreams with words that move me today as surely as they did the day she first spoke them. As a widow on a fixed income, Grandma had saved up her money all year long to buy me a typewriter for Christmas. (Young reader, typewriters were heavy machines that recorded words by striking black ink onto white paper.) I was 11 or 12. That’s an inconsequential detail lost to time. Of deeper, more lasting significance was her reasoning behind the gift. “Because,” Grandma said with all the certainty of one of the prophets I heard about at our small country church, “you need to type out all those stories you make up. One day you can be a writer.”
In the ensuing months and years to come Grandma eagerly read every word I forged with two skinny forefingers. Grandma Rushing went to her grave at 94, still believing I’d be a famous writer. And while I am a multi-published author, Grandma’s dream for my life’s work to be met with fame remains unrealized, and that is more than okay. Her gift to me was her belief in me. How I wish every child could be given such a priceless treasure.
I remember sitting at that typewriter like it was the entrance to another world. I picked and pecked out black marks and enjoyed a new and addictive thrill with every return of the carriage. (Young person, when you arrived at the right margin and hit the carriage return to get back to the left-hand margin, the typewriter would make a lovely sound as if rewarding you for the effort it took to move through the white space.)
One Christmas morning not too many years ago, yesteryear came full circle.
My immediate family had finished opening gifts when my young adult daughter, with a husband and two kids of her own, announced that she had one more present for me. She left the room and returned with a box. The rest of the crowd smiled expectantly.
Truth: Knowing a moment is going to be big doesn’t necessarily prepare you for it.
Inside that box rested an antique typewriter my daughter had happened upon somewhere in Texas. When she saw it, she thought of my story, because of course everyone in this family knows my typewriter story, and she knew I had to have it.
It’s hard to type through tears.
Ironically, it took this writing, this grasping, reaching word search, to figure out why my daughter Jessica giving me a typewriter all these years later reduced me to a wet mess. I believe it’s because her gift was more than a sentimental gesture. It was a nod to the me that came before us.
Before I was a wife, mother, and grandmother, I was a little girl infatuated with the power of words. Years after my grandmother invested in my dreams, my daughter acknowledged them and spoke a blessing over them with one perfectly chosen gift.
What power we have to help others reach their potential. Let’s speak into the dreams of our children and grandchildren. Together we can help them walk into their tomorrows with the confidence born of being deeply loved.
