A Covered Bridge

When I was little my Grandma Hazel had this painting of a covered bridge on the wall over the couch. I remember as a young girl I would stare at it and imagine what it would be like to be young boy fishing in the picture. As a kid I was a believer in the impossible , and I believed I could jump into paintings like Mary Poppins. When Grandma went into the nursing home I didn’t get that painting. There are 9 children, 36 (I believe) grandchildren and even more great grandchildren. I searched for that picture everywhere on ebay hoping to get a copy of it for myself. I searched for a year with no luck. One Christmas, my sister and I both believed we had gotten the best most obscure gifts for each other. I had gotten her the 70’s Barbie camper she always wanted as a kid but my gift did not compare to her gift of the painting I had searched and searched with no luck for. Best Christmas gift I ever received.

The guy I’m dating, we will call him “Jeremy” (since that is his name), suggested we do maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever done  for Valentine’s Day. Yes, I vowed to never celebrate V-Day due to my adolescent scars but some times you have to compromise.  I wish I could take the credit but I had absolutely nothing to do with the plan. He put the roses in the car and we headed to our destination. I was a little nervous. I knew where we were going but I didn’t know how I would react. My Grandma Hazel who just passed away last year spent her last days in a nursing home and I knew just being in one would make me tear up. I’m a natural weeper by nature anyway but especially when it comes to my Grandma who was attached to so many memories. I am a teacher and had received a lot of boxes of chocolates that day so along with our roses we brought the chocolates in with us. A very friendly activities director met us at the door and showed us to the rooms of elderly people who might not have received a Valentine that day. We went around room to room and met many fascinating people. Some who were cheerful and full of joy and others who were apathetic and didn’t know what day or month it even was. I remember walking into a room with an elderly woman wearing a tiara on her head with her daughter laying on her bed chatting up a storm about their lives, but the image that will stick with me is the other woman in the room quietly sitting in a wheelchair. She was turned away from the other woman and her daughter and staring out the window. I remember thinking a rose from a stranger won’t make a difference to anyone’s day but the way she lit up when we handed her the rose and touched her arm made me think that she felt that on this day she wasn’t forgotten.

After all the roses were handed out, we stopped by the room of a 100 year old man named Sylvester. Sylvester used to be a painter but after a botched cataract surgery his sight was taken from him. His wife had lived with him in the same room until last year when she had passed away and now he was the only one left. The activities director wanted to move on from Sylvester’s room pretty quickly but I was fascinated by everything that came out of his mouth. We stayed for about 20 minutes talking about his paintings of various chickens that he had hung on the walls in his room. On our way out he mentioned that he knows “us youngins” probably didn’t think a painting of a covered bridge was anything special but the one “over there” was one of his favorites. I looked at the wall on the way out and saw a painting of a covered bridge and then I saw my Grandma, my childhood, my memories. I told Sylvester that I’ve always loved pictures of covered bridges. Maybe Valentine’s Day isn’t so bad after all.