Did You Have a Hero?

Journal Prompt: What did your hero ignite in you?

I awoke today, to a text from my brother. "Happy birthday, Grandma Reasoner."

She and I met sixty years ago. I had been born across the sea in France. I was her first grandchild. I would have two more siblings for her to love and adore. We were her inner circle, each in our own ways. She was our inner circle.

Kathlyn McNeill Reasoner

She wasn't a milk and cookies grandma. Though she and grandpa did have a gum drawer for us, and delicious specialty store bought cookies we still can't replace. She was a heroic grandma. She had a life history like no one else we had ever met.

Before women had the right to vote, her father walked out on his wife and daughters. For their family to survive, grandma and her two sisters were moved to an orphanage. They went from a two-parent home, to a no parent home, practically overnight.

She lived through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. She knew both deprivation and abundance. The greatest abundance she knew was love. The household of women she came from, stood the tests of time. Inch by inch they carved a life of love and support for each other and their families.

As her grandkids, we grew up hearing her life stories, playing board games, doing puzzles, learning poems, taking walks, and sleeping on her back porch. Most of all, we mattered to her.

What did she ignite in me?

A fierce devotion to family. The gift of storytelling. A craving to live happily. The potential to write. That is the abundance she left me.

Happy birthday, Grandma.