Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“Thank you for making sure I got this. I didn’t know she had these photos,” she told me, but it still didn’t explain why she cared about pictures from a trip my gran had taken with other people.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad they mean something to you,” I said, not willing to ask her questions and invade her privacy. If she had wanted me to know she would have shared it.
“Oh yes,” she said, smiling fondly at the photos in her lap again. “Honey always knew of my love for Nancy. She never judged me or condemned me for my ways. Even when she was a young girl in school, I think she knew about my secret affair,” she chuckled softly.
To keep my jaw from falling open in shock was a feat I deserved an award for. I stared at Wanda as she looked on at the pictures. I wasn’t sure what to say or if I had understood her correctly. She was in her mid-eighties. She had to be. Her room looked like something decorated by every southern grandmother at the Baptist church.
“Nancy wasn’t as young as your mother. Don’t go judging me there. She was in her second year of college when I met her. I was fresh out of college and had my first real job teaching school. She had the most beautiful blonde hair and those dimples when she smiled. I think I fell in love with her the moment I met her. She loved me too, just not enough,” she said sadly and glanced up at me.
“I too often wonder about the road I wished I had been given. The road that doesn’t judge so harshly and allows you to love whomever you choose. I didn’t have that road and neither did Nancy. She could never openly love me. She cared too much about what others would do and say. She was fragile. Although she never married either. I believe it was because her heart was taken and always would be.” She paused then and I swallowed past the lump forming in my throat.
The world had been cruel to so many in the past. It still was at times, but things were changing. They had to… so people like Wanda could love freely.
“Nancy passed away five years ago. She had cancer. Although she had no children, she had a multitude of friends and family who loved her. She had her church and I believe that was what was most important to her. I understood and accepted it, but I loved her dearly.” Wanda held up the album. “And now I have pictures. I had none but that one,” she pointed to a faded polaroid photo of a girl that looked to be about my age smiling at the camera. It was in the most elaborate frame in the room, making it the most cherished photo in the room.
I quickly glanced at the other pictures and wondered who the children and the couples were if she had no husband or children of her own. The photos showed a life fully lived. It appeared as if she had led one of happiness.
“I may not have had a husband or children, but I taught school for over fifty years. I have more children than any one person could want. There were many I grew close to and I have ten godchildren and one great-godchild. Your mother is one of the ten. The day she was born, I gave her a silver spoon with her name and birthday carved in the handle. Then when you were born, I knitted you a pink blanket-”
“With white flowers,” I finished for her. I still had that blanket. I had loved it dearly.
Wanda smiled at me and nodded her head. “That’s the one,” she confirmed. “I made my path the best that I could. That’s what matters in the end. You don’t get another path. Never forget that.”
I moved then. I walked over to Wanda and bent down and hugged her. I felt robbed that I hadn’t known her until now. “Thank you,” I whispered and her hand came around and patted me on the back.
“Thank you, Henley Warren.”
I let her go and stood back up. “I wish I had gotten to meet you before now.”
She smiled. “Oh, child, you have met me before. I made you cheese and marshmallow sandwiches while you played in the sprinkler in my yard.”
The memory of the redheaded lady with her polka dotted dress serving my gran ice tea on her back porch while I played in her yard came back to me. “That was you?” I asked then, wondering how many years it had been.
She nodded her head. “Yes. That was me.”
“But we didn’t come back again,” I said.
She sighed. “When you were eight years old, I moved to Louisiana. I got a position as a professor at LSU. I needed to get away from the town and the life it had forced upon me.”