Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul by Jack Canfield Page A

frightening.
    Had Dad, I wondered, been the glue? Was glue genetic, after all?
    Terrifying thoughts spiraled through my mind as Lee drove me to join relatives.
    Will I lose my family? The peril of that jolted me to the core.
    â€œBlood’s thicker’n water.”
    If Grandma felt that way, couldn’t Dot feel that way, too, just a little bit? The small child inside my adult body wailed and howled forlornly. It was in this frame of mind that I entered Dot’s house after the accident.
    Dot’s house. Not Dad’s and Dot’s house anymore.
    Would Daddy’s void change her? She loved me, yes, but suddenly I felt keenly DNA-stripped, the stepchild of folklore. A sea of familiar faces filled the den. Yet, standing in the midst of them all, I felt utterly alone.
    â€œSusie!” Dot’s voice rang out, and through a blur I watched her sail like a porpoise to me. “I’m so sorry about Daddy, honey,” she murmured and gathered me into her arms.
    Terror scattered like startled ravens.
    What she said next took my breath. She looked me in the eye and said gently, “He’s with your mama now.”
    I snuffled and gazed into her kind face. “He always put flowers on Mama’s grave. . . .”
    She looked puzzled, then smiled sadly. “No, honey, he didn’t put the flowers on her grave.”
    â€œThen who . . . ?”
    She looked uncomfortable. Then she leveled her gaze with mine. “I did.”
    â€œYou?” I asked, astonished. “All those years?” She nodded, then wrapped me in her arms again.
    Truth smacked me broadside. Blood is part water. Grandma just didn’t get it.
    With love blending them, you can’t tell one from the other.
    I asked Dot recently, “Isn’t it time I started calling you Mom?”
    She smiled and blushed. Then I thought I saw tears spring in her eyes.
    â€œKnow what I think?” I said, putting my arms around her. “I think Mama’s looking down at us from heaven, rejoicing that you’ve taken such good care of us, grandmothering my children, doing all the things she’d have done if she’d been here. I think she’s saying, ‘Go ahead, Susie, call her Mom .” I hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “Is that okay?”
    In a choked voice, she replied, “I would consider it an honor.”
    Mama’s song to me was true: I do not walk alone.
    Mom walks with me.
    Emily Sue Harvey

The Perspective of a Pansy
    W hat we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages.
    Henry Ward Beecher
    In Atlanta we have the luxury of planting pansies in the fall and viewing their curious faces all winter long. That is how my grandma described their blooms, as faces. She was right. If you look into a pansy’s velvet petals you can see its eager expression peeking out at you. It was my grandmother’s love for this flower that drew me to Viola tricolor hortensis when I was a little girl. My favorites were the white petals with purple centers, or “faces.” They remain my favorite flowers today.
    Since pansies are annuals, last year’s flowers had long since died and been pulled from the ground, never to be seen again. I hadn’t taken the time to plant even one flat of pansy seedlings that fall. Actually, I hadn’t found the time to do much of anything but work since September. My job had become especially demanding due to a project that required me to fly weekly to Washington, DC. Between airports, delayed flights, cancellations, taxicabs, trains and countless hotel rooms, I hadn’t spent enough time with my husband, hadn’t returned phone calls from my parents, hadn’t sent birthday cards to my dearest friends, hadn’t taken the necessary time to come to terms with the death of my grandma and certainly hadn’t made time to put pansies in the ground.
    Perhaps by skipping the whole pansy planting process that autumn I was putting off facing