“Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land, seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.”

– Beatrix Potter

Each special moment is a gift.

Each fond memory is a treasure, pressed between the pages of our hearts.

I was fortunate enough to be born into a mult-generational household.  Several years before my birth, my mother’s aunt had traveled from her home in Illinois to Pennsylvania to celebrate the arrival of my older brother.  Essie had raised my mom; and on that side of the family, she was the closest thing to a grandma that we knew.  Heart problems that developed during her visit drove the decision for her to be a permanent resident in our family, and her presence in my childhood was one that shaped me in many ways that I hold dear.  Essie taught me kindness.  She taught me faith.  She taught me grace under pressure, as she lived her days in a place far removed from the one she had called home for the first sixty-one years of her life.

I learned many things through living with Essie.  I learned that my mother once had been a little girl who couldn’t say her own name; and instead of Ruthie Matthews, she became known around town as “Woosie Mashews.”  I heard about the time, after mom had read in Heidi about toasted cheese sandwiches, that she put cheese in the toaster, with predictable results.  I heard about Mom’s accomplishments, seen through the eyes of the woman who carried the pride in all her achievements pressed between the pages of her heart.

I suppose I learned to listen by spending time with Essie.  There is something captivating about hearing someone talk about the old times, especially when you see the memories sparkle like love as she watches them happen all over again with her “seeing eye.”  The great oral traditions of remembering history must have begun with the elders, telling and retelling the significant stories of their people — perhaps forgetting that they had told them only an hour earlier — as the younger folks listened and respected each telling.  I think of Potter’s words about walking in her memory to the places her legs no longer can take her, and I think of my daily walks to the very spot where the sun rises.  How will I see that walk when I need to rely on the seeing eye?  Is it possible that the seeing eye can capture all at once the totality of hundreds of days with thousands of nuances of light and color and seasons and beauty and see them all in one trip?

I think of my father, now 88, and the joy that he finds in telling the stories of the days when he stood tall and met life head-on, all pressed and dressed and handsomely attired and ready to take on the world.  I hear him tell about meeting my mother, and knowing in an instant that she was the one.  His eyes dance with the love that filled the moment and has ripened to maturity through so many years.  The stories intrigue me, but what really is captivating is the way that the telling takes him right back to those days long ago.  As his eyes twinkle, I can close my own and see my parents — young, beautiful, and carefree — dancing a fine jitterbug at the U.S.O. party.

We must not miss a day of filling our hearts with the beauty that someday will sparkle in love as we use our seeing eyes — the eyes of our hearts — and relive it again and again as we tell our own tales.