Hours ago, I sat across from Nana and told her.

“Nana, I have to tell you something bad and I know you are not going to want to hear it.”

Her eyebrows lowered, her face 50% pout and 50% fear, and her semi-useless eyes bridging the carpet between us.

She always puts on a show when I have to leave, “I don’t want to hear it.” But that is mostly playful.

She knew this was not that.

“What is it?”

She looked so cute in her teal pajamas. I didn’t even anticipate telling her today, but sometimes you make a decision and other times you don’t have the mechanics to make it, so you start by saying things that decisive people say.

“Nana, I’m moving to Europe.”

Nana’s heart sunk and all she could prop it up with was a bolt of poor reasoning.

“You’re going over there by yourself?” “But how will you understand their language?” “Where are you going?” “Are you going for good?”

The root of her questions was “Will you be okay?” but I knew she was saying “But you make me so happy.”

Europe might as well be an insane asylum, the most dangerous of places, but really it doesn’t matter where I’m going. If it’s not next door or the bedroom upstairs, it means that I won’t see her and she will be without me: Her Natalie Jean, Her Namesake, Her “This Is My Eldest Grand Daughter.”

When I got back from my epic trip of a lifetime across Europe, Nana had a heart attack. It was a long recovery and we all clamored around her in shifts, preparing ourselves for the loss.

I cried more in that week than I may have in my adulthood.

Nana is My Nana Jean, My Namesake, My “This is My Only Grandmother.” She reaches up to kiss me and can only find my collarbone. Nana

Nana Tells Aunt Debbie I’m Going to Europe

I’m going to Europe.

I’ve thought about it, I’ve considered the costs, I’ve previewed the continent and I’ve returned from it.

I have to go.

I have to go for so many reasons, and one necessity.

The necessity is this: I am out there in undefined space, unmeasured angles and unscaled heights, among the breeze and heat, snow and whipping wind. I am in my Grandmother’s heart like a pearl lodged in an oyster, you may only be able to pry me out by the eventual loss of her life. But on the other side of things, away from my precious Nana is a world and I am inside of it. I am going in search of that same pearl of a self I have in my love for my sweet Nana.

So, I do what people do when they make decisions.

I go home, sit on my couch I’m storing at my sister’s and prop my feet on the leather ottoman I am selling, and I write.

I write my not-so-first-post because I refuse to start this blog the way so many do. Nope.