Washington's Wharf

Today we returned to a haunt of my childhood: George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate.   As we trekked along the winding gravel paths leading us from Washington's mansion to the slave quarters and the dock on the Potomac river, Mom described forgotten memories from the time when we lived in the neighboring town of Alexandria. The Potomac took my breath away.  It was silent and gray and still in the soft December sun.

Nenna

I nicknamed my daughter when I was ten years old.

She is my earliest memory of a time when I wrote for someone else, simply because I wanted to. Although she was—and continues to be—only a dream, I wrote to her in a silky smooth journal with all of the earnest, motherly love my precocious heart could muster.

 I never actually intended to name my daughter Nenna. Rather, I envisioned that it would be a mysterious, affectionate nickname that she would never really understand until her tenth birthday when I gave her the diary. Flipping through the pages of the lavender spiral-bound notebook, she would find quotes, magazine clippings, recipes, and pieces of advice from her ten year-old mother, all addressed to “Dearest Nenna."

This was the first time that I recognized the ability of writing to transcend time. It didn’t matter that I was only ten years old; it didn’t matter that I wouldn’t have a daughter for years and years. It never occurred to me that my advice might seem outdated and juvenile, or even humorous. I wrote for myself, what I wished I could hear from the past.

I wrote for my daughter, a more distant piece of me, imagining the echoes of my past colliding with the future.

"My darling girl,

When are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage."

--Alice Hoffman
 
Taken from Wily Brunette