Grace

Just read the obituary of a patron I always really enjoyed seeing.  She was 93 and had been housebound the past two years so it certainly wasn't a tragic death but I felt a twinge of sadness nonetheless.  When I worked at our small branch library she was a weekly visitor and a more pleasant woman would be hard to find. 
What stuck in my mind most about her were the stories she told me about her childhood.  She grew up in a family with 8 siblings and their father was an Irish immigrant who worked as caretaker on a large and fancy property which had, once upon a time, stood across the road from the little library.  The family who owned the property was well off and only inhabited the house in summertime.  There was a little playhouse on the grounds, a semi replica of the "big house".  It sounded amazing...almost a to-scale little building with a porch and curtained windows which went up and down and a shingled roof.  Now, the thing about that little house is that the caretaker's children were not allowed to play in it.  So even when the homeowners weren't around, there was no admittance for the "help's" children.  What blows me away though is how fondly the woman remembered her childhood, including the forbidden playhouse.  She and her sisters would play outside the little house, peering in to see the child sized furnishings and they would PRETEND they could play in it but CHOSE to stay outside.  They had whole scenarios of "living" in that house, what everyone's role was and just how lovely life was in it. 
I can't quite shake the picture of those little girls, close to 90 years ago, knowing they could never step foot in the playhouse yet creating beautiful scenes and memories of it anyway. Tiny sisters, holding hands and truly making their own happiness.

Sweet dreams, Grace...and may heaven be full of only open doors for you.