After

As an elementary-age teacher, I prioritized corresponding with my students through their journals. Sometimes a student would check in with something that had happened in their life - a new baby, a new friend, a fun family activity, but sometimes there would be something more personal or a reaction to a book they had discovered. It was important to me to write in return, sometimes with a question to consider. Nothing complicated; just a connection to the power of writing and words and expression.

Now that I no longer actively teach, I have been missing those kid connections, at least I did until my granddaughter, Zoe, mentioned that she wished she got “letters” in the mail like her Mama and Daddy. Now at the time of this exchange, she was about 3, so I’m not sure what - or how much snail mail she had been exposed to, but she noticed mail was important. And she wanted some too.

And so, since that day, I’ve been writing and snail-mailing a weekly note. This has turned into one of my favorite weekly activities as it has also inspired me to create the card as well as the text. Neither the art nor the message are complicated; my watercolors are pretty basic as one might expect.

Until recent times, the writing has been one-way. But as Zoe, an early childhood learner, discovers letters and sounds and how those things work together to form words, her literate life has expanded. She is beginning to use expressive language herself.

While visiting us on a mid-winter break stay-cation, without prompting, Zoe sat down at my desk with some paper and a pen to write me the note at the top of this post. As she was quiet and focused for quite a bit of time, I wasn't sure what she was concocting, but I stayed out of her space, and I'm so grateful that I did. Zoe's note to me is something I will truly treasure as a grandmother, and as an observer of the power of children learning.

While to this point in time I’ve always been “Nana” with one “n”; I’m adopting the new spelling of my name, “Nanna”. When I asked her about it, Zoe told me she spelled it as it sounds, nan-na. I can’t argue with that.

And I can hardly wait until she writes to me again.