This is an open apology to Grandme, "Miss Icie" McCranie (pictured with her baby brother, my Great Uncle Clyde). As a teenager, I used to get so frustrated with her because she could remember things that happened 60 years ago but couldn't remember that she had asked me the same question three times in one hour. Now? Does anybody know where I put my car keys? Or why I walked into this room? Or how my grocery list ended up in the refrigerator? I'm almost to the point where I need to keep Dave's name on a sticky note. And yet . . .
For reasons even I can't fathom, the first thing that popped into my head when I woke up this morning was the way I used to begin childhood letters to my other grandmother, Granny (that's the two of us on a boat in Key West). Maybe it's because I'm going through old family pics for a work project and just looked through some amazing portraits of her. She lived in Decatur, Alabama, so I didn't get to see her as often as Grandme (she and I lived under the same roof). I hadn't thought of this in decades, but I used to begin my letters to Granny like this:
Dear Granny,
I love you. Do you love me?
It sounds child-like, but in a way, I think all of us ask that question throughout our whole lives—to parents and grandparents, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives and children and BFFs. I love you. Do you love me?
We might not ask it overtly, but it's always there. This Sunday morning, answer it for just one person. I love you. We all need to hear it, especially in the topsy-turvy world we live in.
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