Nana's Wish

Nana’s Wish Odessa woke up slowly, yawning and stretching her arms as she always did in the morning. Carrot, her stuffed rabbit, was just where he always was, cozily near her head, but something warm was very snug against both of her sides. Cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked straight into the brown eyes of a girl just her size. “Hi!” the other girl said. “I was wishing you would be here soon.” “Hello. Your eyes are just like my Nana’s.” “Of course, silly. It’s because I am your Nana, but I’m eight years old now, too. You’re in bed with your Aunt Martha and me in Maryland in 1955. You get to spend all day with us. I kept wishing and wishing and wishing and finally my wish came true! I’m so excited. Now, get up sleepy head. It’s a new day! There is only one bathroom and if we don’t hurry Sam and Eliott will hog it. Hurry, hurry.” The girls rushed out of bed and were into the bathroom in a jiffy. Soon with teeth and hair brushed they came back in the small pink bedroom and started to dress for the day. Martha was very happy to see Odessa. “Maureen told me she was wishing for you to visit, but I told her not to get her hopes up. Oh no, Odessa,” she quickly added when she saw Odessa slipping on some pants and a tee-shirt. “You’re going to school with us. You have to wear a dress.” “But my legs might get cold in school if I wear a dress and what if I want to go on the jungle gym?” asked Odessa. “Odessa, it’s school. You have to wear a dress!” Nana insisted. “It doesn’t matter if you are cold or hot. You’re a girl. All girls wear dresses to school.” She thought for a second. “You mean where you come from, you don’t wear dresses to school? How strange! I can’t even imagine it! Anyway, don’t worry about being cold. It is May and very hot. We’ll jump rope at recess. The Gym is at the high school and there isn’t any jungle in Maryland.” “Okay.” Odessa put on a skirt and top that were in a bag that mysteriously had come along with her and the three girls tromped down the stairs to answer the call to breakfast. Including Odessa there were seven around the table. Of course, they welcomed Odessa, because she was a part of their family no matter what year she would come into it. That is the way of wishes. Nana’s mother, who would later become Odessa’s Grammy, was at one end of the table. Nana’s father was at the other end. Her brothers, Sam and Eliott sat on one side of the table. Martha sat closest to her father on the other side and Nana sat near her mother. There was a platter with a pile of fried eggs, a platter of bacon and a steady supply of toast. Though Odessa liked bacon, she wasn’t sure she could eat the gooey eggs, even though the others were digging in. She noticed that each girl took one egg, one piece of bacon and two pieces of toast. Everyone had a glass of milk in front of them. Odessa thought she saw something floating in her milk. It was a piece of grass! Ugh. No way was she going to drink that. “Oh sorry, Odessa,” Nana said as she fished out the grass. “Sometimes when the milk is strained, something falls back in. I’ll trade with you.” She switched glasses and began to drink the milk as though there had never been any grass in it. “You mean this milk came from one of your cows?” “Oh yeah,” Sam, nine years old, replied. “I milked Betsy last night.” “Don’t say, ‘yeah’ Sam,” his mother admonished him. “Mommy, all the kids do!” “And don’t say ‘kid’! A ‘kid’ is a baby goat!” “Mommy, I ain’t gonna say anything if you keep telling me what not to say,” he teased. “Sam! What am I going to do with you? Don’t say ain’t! Now go brush your teeth or you’ll be late for school. Martha, go get the hairbrush so I can braid your hair. Odessa and Maureen, go wash your hands. Eliott, aren’t you glad you are just barely 5 and you get to stay home with your Mommy?” “Yeah,” Sam told him. “Martha and I went to kindergarten in D.C. ,but now that we live on the farm, you and Maureen get to stay with Mommy for years and years and years until First Grade, you lucky dog!” While Martha’s hair was being tightly braided, Nana and Odessa prepared four brown paper lunch bags. In each one they put an apple, two homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a tongue and mustard sandwich wrapped loosely in waxed paper. Odessa was again wondering about how hungry she would be by the end of this day. She looked longingly at the other cookies on the counter. Nana wrote each person’s first name in pencil on a paper bag.