Your only Princess
2004-07-06 @ 10:44 a.m.

I remember so vividly how it all started. How I came to realize that I was the one spinning, how I enjoyed the fact that if I'd spin really fast, then stop, the whole world would spin around me.

Unfortunately, I didn't know at the time what it all meant, or how it would affect me in later years.....

I was four years old, standing in the front yard of the two story brick house we lived in. Spinning fast, my arms stretched out wide to feel the wind in my fingers. I'd stop and feel like I was still moving as I watched the other homes and the tress pass my line of sight yet again as if independant from the ground they lay on.

My dress was daisy yellow and linen, my least favorite. My mother always made me wear it when we knew my grandmother, Nana, would be around, she had purchased it for me on her last trip to London, and thought it made me look like a lady, something that even at the age of four I had no desire to be.

Nana was a strict and usually cross woman who had migrated from Wales when she was in her early twenties. She had come alone, in hopes of getting her degree in english and being able to teach the "uneducated americans" proper language. She received her masters in English and later joined the American Navy as a nurse. She saw the world through the eyes of wounded soldier's stories.

It was that day, I learned that if I would spin fast enough, long enough, that I could make the whole world revolve around me..........

My Nana died four years ago yesterday. I always try to stay busy on that particular anniversary. It saddens me. My mistakes that year were huge. Not seeing her for several months before her passing was one of them. I see myself following in her path on a daily basis. I'm finding things in myself that I never knew I possessed that seem to come from her.

I had to refer to her favorite cookbook last night for a question about a measurement I needed. The book, one I had never looked at until after Emma was born is dedicated to an Emma. I never knew much about her family history, but in going through her recipe box several months ago we found a peanut brittle recipe that was labled "Aunt Emma's Peanut Brittle". Funny how those we think are gone, touch us in the smallest of ways.

I miss you Nana. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I loved you more.

Love,

Your only Princess