The Picture of the Sailor

I close my eyes and I am once more a little girl sitting close beside my grandmother. We sit wrapped in a blanket of love staring up at a picture on her wall. In the picture a young sailor is smiling back at us. The sailor is my grandmother's son, my father.

My grandmother's voice becomes soft the years slip away and she speaks. Through her eyes I can see this sailor not as a young man but as a child. "When I sent him off to school,' she says quietly, 'I would wait and watch until he turned around and waved one last time then I would go back inside. He would always turn to wave and I would always wait."

Grandmother's stories draw me back in time, the love with which she speaks of my father washes away the years and I, his child, watch him grow through her eyes. The child becomes a man. The little boy she had stood waiting for to turn around for one last glance goes off to war. Her arm around me tightens but her eyes never leave the picture of the sailor.

My grandmother never grew tired of telling the story of the sailor and I never grew tired of listening. We shared this special bond of love, she for her son and I for my father. Wrapped up in this blanket of love I saw the man who was my father through the loving eyes of his mother.