My Great Grandmother Nanny

by Anna

I am not sure whether a child sees the true magic of life or whether the magic is actually within the child. Whichever it is, I know that there was a time when I saw and felt things as if I were in a different world. Now, as I close my eyes and try to be with all of my feelings and senses as a child does so naturally, I can almost be there again. I can feel the soft presence of her and hear her voice calling my name.

Though she was a mere five feet tall with a slim, small frame, my Great Grandmother Nanny seemed the largest and most amazing person to me. I can still almost feel the warmth of her hand as she led me outside to a world of wonder in a half-acre back yard. Her delicate features, wrinkled with so many years, seemed to take on a girlish hue as she filled my small hands with dried bread crumbs and seed. Then, putting a finger to her mouth, she motioned me to silence. I stood quietly waiting as Nanny started a series of sounds that broke the stillness around us with small chirping and clucking. One by one her small feathered friends appeared, until it seemed as though the ground were alive with song birds darting in and out, competing for a place at her feet.

Delighted, Nanny would then begin her long introductions, as she quickly pointed to certain birds in the vast fold. “Oh, here’s my friend, Elroy, and look there, he’s brought his friend Sigmund. Oh, Anna, there in the bushes, do you see her? It’s little Gracie. I see little William, but I wonder whatever happened to Timmy? As she rattled off name after name, I sat in pure wonder. At one time I had come to that very spot alone. Over and over again, I tried to call the birds from their elusive posts and none had answered. Deciding that this was a magic that only Nanny wielded, I was filled with even more awe of her than ever before.

Once I had come to visit in the evening when Nanny was preparing herself for bed. I watched as her small form moved beneath a soft flannel nightgown covered in the print of light green leaves and soft pink petals. I remember thinking how much like an elderly angel she looked, with her silver-gray hair softly falling over her shoulders and the glow of a small lamp highlighting the contours of her face.

Then Nanny did something I had never seen a human being do in all my young existence. With a quick flip of her hand she expertly extracted a perfect set of teeth from her mouth and dropped it plunking into a glass of cold water on her dresser. My mouth dropped open in shock, and as I gulped in a quick breath of air, my small body began to step backward. Also startled, Nanny quickly glanced in my direction. She then looked back at the dentures, which were now soaking peacefully for the night. After that, she looked back at me with an understanding look that plainly said, “Come here. Let me explain”.

As I readied myself for her words, Nanny did another thing that seemed odd to me at the time. As if something had taken hold of her, she sat down on the bed and began to laugh uncontrollably. I am sure that when she had recovered from this she would have explained to me what was so funny about the fact that her entire set of teeth had just come out in her hands, but I did not wait for that. I hurried home, which was just next door, and hid under my covers for the remainder of that night. Nanny had once again pronounced herself as the most amazing, yet mysterious woman I had ever known.

Being Irish, my Great Grandmother would often spin tales that had been carefully handed down to her from the long line of Murphy’s before her. One day, while we were walking barefoot together on the morning grass, feeling the dew cool and moist beneath our feet, Nanny suddenly stopped. She cupped a hand to her ear and began to listen in concentrated suspense. “Listen Anna,” she said excitedly. “Do you hear that?” I stood very still and with every ounce of my senses strained to hear it. “What is it Nanny”, I asked. “There it is again”, she said, looking at a tall bunch of grass swaying in the morning breeze. As I started to walk toward the spot she had motioned to, she quickly caught me. In a whisper she warned, “You’ll scare them away...now be careful”. Frozen, I looked up expectantly to find Nanny’s gentle and knowing eyes twinkling back. “Who are they, Nanny,” I whispered. As Nanny knelt down beside me, I could hear my own heart beating, and for that moment all other things melted quietly away. There was only me, Nanny, and whatever it was that rustled in the tall bending grasses, looming even larger with every breath I took.

“Leprechauns,” she said. They always come out this time of day, and they are so mischievous! You can see them sneaking about in tall grasses and bushes. But they won’t hurt us. They just want to get a closer look.” As I listened with total wide eyed innocence, my Great Grandmother went on to tell me of the long and fascinating history of leprechauns. Many times after this I would sit quietly among the clover and tall grass in her back yard tentatively watching, listening, and waiting for the little folk who seemed always to elude me.

Another memory I have of Nanny was her singing. Even as an elderly woman, her voice was clear and beautiful. Often I would sit on the blue couch in her living room and listen as she reached lovely soprano heights and filled each corner of the house with the sound of old folk songs as she was preparing meals in the kitchen. Whenever a song was especially profound, she would clang a pot or bang a utensil on the counter to give it even more emphasis. At those times when a song was especially sad or meaningful to her, she would pause between choruses to reflect. I often wondered what stories lay behind the songs that my Great Grandmother sang, as most of them were sung in Gaelic.

Then, there were the stories that Nanny told me of the old days. Always her stories would be filled with wonder, and as she talked I would allow the words to carry me off to far shores and to people who led lives so different from my own. At times she would stop to smile or laugh, and at other times she would look away with a far-off sadness and longing that seemed to transport her to distant worlds. I always knew to wait patiently for her to continue. Nanny taught me the importance of reflecting. So much would be lost if we were to forget the lessons that our lives have taught us.

As the years passed and I grew older, so did Nanny. Even as a child I took note of her hands, crippled with arthritis, struggling to hold a fork during a meal. She smiled kindly, yet sadly, when I or anyone else would take the fork from her hand to feed her. The legs that I used to run to keep up with, eventually slowed to a faltering limp. More and more I would find her resting heavily in a large brown arm chair by a half-open window. She still smiled when she saw me and held me warm and safe in a brightly colored quilt that she had made in her younger years, but something in her had faded.

Then on one soft spring day, when the sound of birds filled the cool air, Nanny went away. With a half-said rosary still wound about her hands, she passed through a gate and into a light where she would be forever held, a place where there was no pain.

I often think of her now, and at those times I see her not through the eyes of the adult that I have become, but as the child that she awakens within me. I see her with her many bird friends who I like to think still come to her call. I see her sweet face framed in a green and pink flannel nightgown. And at those times when the wind stirring long grasses stirs within me a memory, I feel her there with me, and once again, I hear the leprechauns.