Moss

Once, when I was about seven years old --second grade-- I spent the weekend with my Grandmother for the first time. Up until this point, we had spent about three years of my life in Alaska, a year in Georgia, and another year in South Carolina. We were getting ready to move back to Alaska for a four-year tour.

My Grandmother lived in a mobile home next to my uncle, down an old dirt road, surrounded by extended family. She was one of the few people I knew who didn't have a standard-size bed; it was a single-and-a-half, not quite double.
She also had an adorable mutt named Daisy who looked a lot like Benji to my seven-year-old eyes. Daisy was the sweetest dog I've ever known, including those my parents and I have had.

My Grandmother loved UpWords and still had someone deliver sodas in glass bottles. She had the requisite candy dish on the coffee table in the living room but in the North Carolina summers, the humidity made all the lemon drops stick together, so if you wanted one, you had to work really hard to get it.

She always had coloring books and crayons in the drawer under the television. By the time I was ten, I probably recognized my cousins' distinct coloring styles and initials better than I would recognize their faces if we were to run into one another.

The entire time she lived there, she kept a horrible little ceramic robin I made in the first grade, right on top of the television. She watched a lot of golf, back before anyone knew who Tiger Woods was.

She framed the prints off the back of Readers' Digest and would swap them out in two frames in the kitchen whenever she got tired of looking at them. I couldn't tell you what was on her bookshelf, because I always got distracted by the three-legged dog someone (possibly her brother?) had carved, which resided on the bottom shelf.

She had a grape vine out back, where I spent what felt like an hour one day helping my sister find a ring she'd lost. She had apple trees out front but it seems the apples were never ripe. She had a picnic table, under which I came across my first, live snake.

My Grandmother loved lime sherbet. She made the best rice krispie treats. She also claimed to eat brains and eggs, but I'm not sure whether that's true or if she was just pulling my leg.

Most of my childhood, my Grandmother wore her long hair up in a bun, and I swore when I grew up I'd always keep my hair long enough to pull up like hers. My Grandmother was funny and intelligent and, at times, completely irreverent... but something about her said class.

The first time I spent the night with my Grandmother, in her guest room, with a guard rail on the bed though I'd never used or needed one at home, she read silly poems to me at bedtime. The ones she recited from memory were better, though.

The next morning, she woke me up -- something that never happened because I was an early riser -- and urged me to get dressed quickly. I did so, fumbling for my shoes in the dark, not understanding why I was hurrying.

She led the way across the dirt road, onto the property of the extended family, using the cane she had used since her stroke years before to pick her way along the tree line. I hustled along behind her on my stubby little legs and, though I don't recall for sure, I probably asked a dozen questions until we reached a small treed hill.

There, my Grandmother and I stepped up and looked out to one of the few spots in the county where you could actually watch the sun rise without the view being blocked by trees. It was absolutely beautiful, and the only sounds we heard were the birds in their nests and a natural spring bubbling nearby. There were reds and oranges and golds that I'd never noticed. (Now, as an adult with my own children, I'm always eager to point out a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset...)

Then, my very prim and proper Grandmother leaned on her four-clawed cane and slipped her shoe and sock off one foot. She looked at me with merriment in her eyes and explained that whenever you saw moss growing, you should get barefoot and feel it with your toe.

This morning, that's exactly what I did, and what inspired this post. I encourage you all to not only look up to notice the sunrises and sunsets, but also to look down, find the moss, and feel it with your toe.