Buck

I think about my great-grandmother, Ethel Russell, just about every day. Most people--even around here, where multiple generations of family live in the same community--can't say they knew or even remember their great-grandparents. But I had her for 31 years, which meant her influence was imprinted on me in a powerful way. I hear her voice most often, it seems, when I'm with my children. I think maybe that's one of the ways God speaks to us. I can't tell you for sure what she says. It's more like a gentle whisper, a nudge, a conviction, a reminder to remember what's important. Those tiny hands wrapped around PlayDough. Imaginations that turn the teeth of a hair clip into those of a T-Rex. The magic of a piece of rainbow on the living room wall. Mashed potatoes morphing into a volcano. And as my children grow, I want them to take pleasure--as I did--in the very simple things of life, those things I cherished on her farm. I want them to love the musty smell of an old barn carpeted in straw, hear rusty voices from sepia pictures, climb a gnarled apple tree and fill their bellies full of June apples, know the bark of a birch tree, smell the aroma of Russian tea boiling on a stove and know that it's Christmas. These are the things they'll carry with them in life...these are the things that will be home to them when no place else can be. She was home to so many of us, just as her daughter and granddaughter are home to us now. But when we are all together, she moves around and through us as if she were still alive And that is what I'm striving to be for my children: home.
I wrote about her last year in the online literary journal, Still, and I'm grateful to Jason Howard, Still's nonfiction editor, for giving me that opportunity. You can find the essay here.