Nana
When I was little, visiting Nana meant a long drive, up north, to a hotter, greener country where possums lived in the roof.
Visiting Nana meant a big house in the bush, and Nana’s big pantry, where there were infinite wonders, and we got to drink Coke — such luxury! And we’d eat the biscuits and cakes that Nana made, and it was like Nana’s house was the top of the Faraway Tree.
Visiting Nana meant the dripping trees and the warm scent of the red Maleny mud and bushwalks in the day and playing Scrabble at night and living in the aura of a woman of indefatigable energy. An unstoppable force of nature who was like nobody else on earth.
As I grew older, visiting Nana wasn’t the big house in the bush any more, but the sweet treats remained, and the energy never flagged, and the understanding grew of how extraordinary Nana was. A tiny woman who I was taller than by the time I was ten, but who I felt I’d never be stronger, braver or fiercer than.
By the time I knew her, she had already carved out an astonishing life. She had worked like a trojan for decades, raised a family in a harsh land, but at a time when most would’ve been thinking about putting their feet up, she was heading back to school and gaining a degree — with honours. She attacked life with a vigour that it exhausts me to think about — and whatever obstacles life could provide, she would wrestle into submission as surely as she would put in their place any grandkid who felt like playing up on her watch. You couldn’t faze Nana — she’d stared down tougher kids than you and lived to tell the tale.
It was when I became, relatively speaking, a grown-up, that I slowly started to understand what all those visits to Nana — and the visits by Nana to us — had really meant. The bushwalks and the biscuits and the boardgames were all just little parts fitting into the big picture of what Nana gave to us all: love. A love that lived and breathed and flowed through everything she did, a love for life and a love for her family that was truly invincible. Visiting Nana meant being enveloped by her love for you: it was impossible, in her presence, to doubt that you were loved, and that there was someone who would do anything for you.
I didn’t see Nana very much as a grown-up — not as much as I should have. I’d give anything to be able to sit and talk with her again like I did when I was small, about football or wild animals or Transformers or any of the stuff I was wildly passionate about, that she, I’m sure, couldn’t care less about but was happy to listen to me prattle on with rapt attention. I’d give anything. But I will live my whole life knowing that she’s my Nana — and that’s something hardly anyone is lucky enough to be able to say.
Love you Nana. From BP Super.
