I'm walking with an angel.

We moved to Provo when I was two years old. At first we lived on a street called Cherry lane, and a couple years later moved around the corner to Ash Avenue. Our house on Ash was the rented, upstairs floor of small, two bedroom, one bathroom home. Our landlady was old and lived elsewhere. In the basement of our house a separate kitchen, a bedroom, an old washroom, a bathroom and a huge room full of.. stuff. I don't even know what was in that room - a piano, furniture, boxes of dishes maybe - but I do have a memory of looking into that room and wondering how on earth things could be so old and dusty and forgotten, because that's what they were: old, dusty and forgotten. Part of me wanted to explore all the forgotten parts of this room, but the other, stronger part, was too terrified of what bugs and cobwebs might be in that room, and also knew that we weren't allowed in that room anyway. Miss Guilty Conscience here didn't like getting in trouble.
Our backyard was deep, green and beautiful. We had an irrigation ditch that ran the width of our yard along the back fence which my baby sister, less than a year old at the time, practically lived in. When she wasn't asking to take a nap, she was half naked, sitting in the irrigation ditch with the dog. We also had a big walnut tree that my brother and I used to string my barbies from which his G.I. Joes heroically saved, and a sandbox with a wooden frame that we put so many burn marks into from failed, and successful, attempts at burning ants and other bugs with a magnifying glass.
Our next-door neighbors to the left were an elderly couple that quickly became our fourth set of grandparents. My baby sister would go over to their house and ask if "diduh wayenn" (sister warren) could play. And play they did! You could hardly understand a word that came out of my sister's mouth, but she didn't mind as long as you nodded your head and pretended like you understood, and she'd go right on babbling!
They lived in a two-story house. Their kitchen was huge, their bedroom was peach colored, and their couches were white, velvet floral, and will forever be ingrained in my childhood. In their backyard, they had a huge walnut tree, two apple trees up against the fence with a hammock strung between them, and the "Little House," inside of which, we all put our hand prints. For a little while, they even had a shaggy white dog named Chaka (Shaka maybe, I have no idea how to spell it) that was so crazy he had to be fenced all the time. We loved that dog, though, and we fed it "Chakaberries" from the "Chakaberry bush" next to his cage pretty much everyday. I'm a hundred percent sure there is no such thing as a Chakaberry bush, and I'm also a hundred percent sure I don't know what the real name of that bush was!
We would go camping with gramps and gran every summer, at least once, have fires in their backyard, do projects with gramps, and make cookies with gran. It was every child's dream! I learned so much from my sweet grandparents, and I still learn so much from them. It's funny how one thing said to you as a child can mean something entirely different once you grow up.
When we were younger, my brother and sister and I would head over to gramps' and gran's, and if any of us ever accidentally uttered the word "can't" we were promptly told by our no-nonsense gran to stop our swearing. There was no way on this earth that our gran would ever let us use that word in her house, let alone in our vocabulary, if she could help it. At the time, I didn't think much of it, in fact, I just thought it was a silly rule, because I thought it entirely true that I couldn't do certain things. But there was simply no way gran was going to have any of that. So we learned to say things like, "not able to at this time," or "don't understand how to at this time," or "will be able to."
Can I just say it was borderline annoying as a five year old? Looking back now, however, I see the wisdom in her words. The moment you say "can't" you put a limitation on yourself. We are capable of tremendous things. No one thought Helen Keller would ever be able to do much of anything, let alone speak, and yet she did. And what about that girl who swam the English Channel with no arms or legs? She did what no one thought she could do, either.
You're stronger than you think you are. You can do the things you don't think you can. You have within you the power to do great things.
One of the things that I loved about my gramps and gran was their little expressions of love toward each other. Everyday before work, gramps would leave a note for gran on a paper napkin. Usually it would say something like, "I love you," but he would change it up every day. She hung that napkin on the fridge everyday, and replaced it with a new note the next day. Even as a little girl, I thought that was probably the sweetest thing I'd ever seen any man do for his wife. He treated her, and still treats her, so amazingly. I can only hope I marry a man half as amazing as my gramps.
I remember on one camping trip taking a walk with my gramps. He lovingly held my soft, small hand in his rough, calloused hand, as we walked along the paved road inbetween campsites. His hands felt worn, but they were strong and comforting and made me feel safe. Softly, I could hear him singing a melody, "I'm walkin' with an angel, an angel, an angel, I'm walkin' with an angel..." as we made our way through the campsite. When I asked him what the song was, he asked me what I thought it meant. I asked him if he meant the angel was me. He smiled, and with a twinkle in his wise and thoughtful eyes, he told me that even though that was true, that wasn't exactly what he meant by the song. Then he told me a story.
My gramps and gran had two sons. To my knowledge, at the time, those were their only children. In fact, one of their sons used a fifty cent ring that I had gotten out of a vending machine to propose to his wife. But that's another story. What I didn't know was that my gramps and gran had had another child - a daughter. She passed away a few days after she was born due to complications. I was surprised to see my gramps smile as he told me the story, and I wondered why he didn't seem sadder. But then he went on to tell me that sometimes when he would go on walks by himself, he could feel his daughter walking right by his side. He said he knew it then, too. We were walking with an angel.
And I could feel her walking with us then as we walked through the trees together. As we walked, I joined in singing that sweet melody with my gramps. The three of us, walking together through the beautiful woods. It's one of my sweetest memories.
I wish right now that I could sing that beautiful melody to all of you, because the words alone on this page don't do the melody justice. But I hope you feel at least a little bit of what I'm feeling as I write this. Sometimes I sing that song to myself, and I close my eyes, and I remember the feeling of my gramps rough, loving hand closed around mine, feeling like nothing in the world could hurt me, feeling all the love in the world, and knowing, without a doubt, that I was walking with an angel. In fact, I often find that sweet melody drifting through my thoughts throughout the day, and I wonder why it has stuck with me so long. Sometimes I wonder if I still have the melody right, or if I've mixed it with another melody I'm familiar with.
But that melody and that memory mean so much to me. That knowledge, knowing that there are angels around us all the time, has been part of my testimony for such a long time. I know, without a doubt, that we walk with angels all the time. There have been times in my life that I've felt so heavy, and I know that the only way possible that I made it through those days at all is because those angels were holding me up.
Just take the time to feel those angels around you, walking with you.
You're walking with an angel.
<3