GRANNY'S DIARY

 My granny was a great storyteller. She could spin a tale complete with stars, fairies, and magical meetings quicker than a bunny could disappear down a hole. As a little girl, I visited her in her cottage and  listened to her stories completely enchanted. I would ask at the end, “Granny, did that really happen?”

She would chuckle and always answer, “Yes, it did. Sometime. Somewhere.”

I never questioned her further. I just accepted what she said.

As I grew up, I often asked for my favorite stories again, and she would kindly oblige. She had no trouble telling the stories again. It was as if she remembered them so well because she had actually lived those stories sometime, somewhere. I urged her to write them down, but she would just smile and shake her head no. Once I asked her why not and she smiled and said, “Ah, the world isn’t ready yet for my tales and may or may not ever be. They are for your ears only.”

That answer made me feel very special and well loved, so I didn’t suggest writing them down ever again.

Before Granny died, she gave me a present on my eighteenth birthday. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. On the outside of the package she wrote, “To my Evaline who loved my stories. Do not open until Death takes me away sometime, somewhere.”

I accepted her gift and promised to abide by her wishes. Granny died peacefully asleep in her bed in her cottage a week later on a full moon night.

Her solicitor visited the family, read her will, and everyone seemed satisfied. She left her small cottage in the village to me. No one objected. There was no mention of her other present to me, so I didn’t mention it either. I moved into Granny’s cottage the very next day.

I waited a few days more to open her present. I had set it on top of the dresser in her bedroom, which was now my bedroom, remembering Granny until I was ready to open it. The fact that it had the shape and weight of a book increased my curiosity for to my knowledge Granny had not been much of a reader, a teller of tales, but not a reader.

I remember the feeling of excitement when I picked up the package and carried it to my bed (once hers, in fact the bed where she had died.) I sat holding it and could feel her love seeping into me. My fingers tingled as I undid the string and carefully peeled back the paper revealing a leather-bound book! But when I opened the cover, I discovered it was a diary and on the first page in Granny’s spidery thin but clear handwriting it said: “My Diary of My Travels-Dedicated to my granddaughter Evaline.” I gasped as I read and traced those words with my finger. To my knowledge, Granny had never traveled anywhere. She had always been in the village living in her cottage tending to her beautiful, beloved garden. I fanned the pages and yes, they were all filled with her writing. In the midst of the fanning, there suddenly dropped into my lap a photograph that had been tucked amongst the pages. I didn’t know if Granny had ever owned a camera. I’d never seen her use one.

With trembling hands, I plucked the photo out of my lap and examined the image before me. There was Granny as a young woman. I recognized her immediately because of a treasured family photo of her with her younger brother, my Great Uncle Oliver, before he left for the first war against Germany. That photo sat on the mantle in the house where I grew up. It was one of those studio-posed portraits popular in their day. I never knew my Great Uncle Oliver because he died in the war that was supposed to end all wars, but didn’t.

In the photo I now held in my hand, it wasn’t Oliver standing next to Granny. It was a winged being like one of the fairies that peopled the tales she told me when I was a young child. I turned the photo over and read the inscription: “Me and Galadriel on my first trip to Faery.”

I lay back and sank into the pillows at the head of the bed holding the photo and Granny’s diary against my chest with a thousand questions coursing through my brain. I pushed myself into a sitting position propped up in bed and switched on my reading lamp beside the bed. I started reading. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Granny’s voice filled me with wonder as I read about her travels and adventures in Faery. These were her stories that I knew so well, all filled with adventure, faeries, and magic. No wonder she told me the world wasn’t ready for her stories. She told them truly, the way a person who has traveled to a foreign country recounts experiences of travel. Enchanted and gripped anew by the stories, I read to the end of the diary. On the last page, I read: Evaline, if you are reading this, I am dead, and you are living in my cottage. Faery is not dead. Galadriel and all the others live still in Faery, which is the Somewhere I told you about. They await you there. Here’s how you get there. These were her instructions carefully numbered and presented: 

1.    Go out to the garden on the next full moon night.

2.    Stand in the middle and close your eyes.

3.    Say: Na Ya Tip Lo, Na Ya Tip Hi, Na Ya By

4.    Repeat that chant three times and wait without fear.

5.    Count to 5 slowly and open your eyes.

6.    A portal will appear. Believe and step through and there you will be…in Faery.

7.    Friends you will find. True friends.

8.    Any full moon night you may travel there, but no one else may accompany you. Like me, you may tell stories of your adventures if anyone will listen to you, with a heart full of love, as you listened to me, dear Evaline.

The next full moon night I did so.

In fact, I have continued to travel to Faery once a month on the full moon night all the rest of my life. I, too, have had many adventures there. When I became a grandmother, I told my stories to my sweet young granddaughter Lucy, just as Granny had told her stories to me. I also have kept a secret diary of my travels. One day when Lucy is eighteen, I will give her my diary of my travels to Faery and Granny’s diary too. If she should so choose, she will be able to travel to Faery as Granny and I have done. There she will find true friends waiting. I have tucked a couple of photos of me and Galadriel and other Fae friends for her to find in my diary when that day comes.

Only time will tell when that day will be and what will happen next, thanks to Granny’s diary and mine too. Meanwhile, Lucy continues to visit me in the cottage, and I tell her more stories gleaned from my travels and adventures in Faery.

And so, life goes on like the great story it is.