My nana and Barry Manilow

My Nana is a spry old woman. Just to give you an example- she quit down hill skiing at the age of 78. She knows how to be tough. I think she gets that from her mother. My great-grandma had a lot of spitfire. She was such a troublemaker. There is a story of my great-grandma and my nana that my mother just loves. When my nana had finished nursing school and had secured a job she bought a lovely brown suit and a pair of low pumps. She spent the sum of her first paycheck on this ensemble and was very proud. Somehow my nana’s family ended up moving and after the move my nana had not been able to find her precious brown suit and the pumps that she had bought. She looked and looked and it never turned up. Years went by and my nana had forgotten about the suit. Thirty years after this incident when my nana was visiting a distant cousin in England her and her cousin got to talking about family and about my great-grandma who had long time passed. As the conversation progressed and memories were starting to be shared her cousin shared her favorite memory of my grandmother. About the time that my nana and her family moved her cousin’s family had stumbled on a bit of difficulty and my great-grandmother, in all kindness, sent my nana’s suit to her because she hated it and didn’t want it in her house!
That was my great-grandma for you. The moral of the story? I’m not too sure but that is the kind of women that are from my bloodline. Do you see what I have to live up to?
Well getting back my nana, there are times when I completely admire her strength. She is 82 has lived through the depression of the thirties, seen friends and lovers go to war, survived two husbands and a heart attack. Who couldn’t admire that? My nana’s first husband died when my mom was in her twenties and she remarried when I was just 8-weeks old.
Her second husband, my Grandpa Al, was a train conductor for CN Rail. He died when I was in grade six, from lung cancer. My grandpa Al was a fine man. He was the kind of guy who was always in the details and never wanted the spot light- you needed something done, he was your man. He spoiled us grand kids, pony rides at the local farmer’s fair, trips to the island and notes in our lunches when he came to visit. He chose to retire ten years late so that my nana could live a comfortable life incase he left this world before she did. He took very good care of my nana and treated my mom and my uncles, even though they were grown with their own kids, like they were his own. The last thing he did minutes before He left this world was make sure that my nana had a place to sit and a decent cup of tea. Our family lost a precious man the day he died.
I still think about him, about what he was in my life and the legacy of caring he left behind. I can usually do it without tearing up, but there is one thing that always stops me in my tracks. My nana and grandpa Al loved to go dancing…they went dancing once a week. After my grandpa died my nana used to crank up Barry Manilow- I never really understood it, I mean why Barry? But one time while Barry was playing I walked into the kitchen and the sight made me cry. There was my nana with her eyes closed and her arms around an imaginary figure of my grandpa, she was swirling around the kitchen dancing with the man of her dreams, listening to the music that they listened to when they danced together. I tiptoed away and cried in my room for a while.
(Supposedly) I am a grown woman these days and that scene still tugs at my heart, not because of Barry Manilow but because just like my nana I long to be in the arms of the man of my dreams. I long to dance the night away lost in the movement of two bodies swirling on the dance floor. I think it is because I am a girl, I think that we are wired like that. I’m pretty sure that guys don’t feel this way, but if you are a guy and I am dead wrong please let me know.
We were wired for love, for that electric charge that ignites whenever we touch and for women we long passion. The thing is that earthly love can’t bring this- I know I’ve tried. It always leaves you empty, wanting more but God’s love is eternal and ever constant. Girls want to be noticed we aren’t content with hiding our beauty or dancing with an imaginary figure- we want the real thing. We want Jesus. And Jesus wants us too. So crank up the Barry Manilow and start dancing, let Jesus take you and hold you close. Twirl the night away and rest in the knowledge that this can and will last forever. In John Hiatt’s song Have a Little Faith in Me, it goes “Time is our friend, because for us there is no end.” So keep dancing and let the God that controls all time and space hold you in His arms for eternity.