For My Nana, I Love You

Did you ever wonder if things happen for a reason, or if we are guided from above? I wonder, I really do. Last weekend on our way fishing, I saw ahead a yard sale and pulled right in before the yard sale. This is unusual because normally I drive by a yard sale and then turn around, or drive by and return on my way back by after doing whatever I was doing. This one I saw some furniture out in a parking lot on the side of the road, thought yard sale and pulled over. This was such a wonderful yard sale. My Godson was looking for a table and chairs and I was charged with finding them. I found the table for $2. Good deal. Then I looked over and nearly lost my mind, although I had to act calmly or they may have raised the price. An old-fashioned croquet set with stand just like my Nana and Papa used to have at their cottage. I have been looking for a croquet set like that for over a year now. Believe it or not, they are over $100 on EBay and people are really looking for them. I entered three auctions during the last year for one and bailed out and $100 and they kept on going. That price doesn’t even included shipping. Last summer I searched all of the sporting good stores and no luck. My sister-in-law actually found a set at the toy store this summer and bought it for us, it is fun to play but wasn’t like the memory I was hoping to recreate. It is cheap and stows away in a little bag, nice but not the antique kind of artsy yet functional memory I wanted in my home. Here it was at this yard sale for $1. One dollar, my mind mentally blew. I sent my daughter for my purse out of the car and stood guard in front of it, so no one else should have it.

Then on the way to the car, I spied a box of games, “Oh what do you have here” I said and picked up the top game and underneath it was Rumikub, my Nana’s favorite game that I used to play with her, my mom and our whole family when I was little. We would sit on the back screened in porch at their cottage at the dining room table and play all night after supper. That game was also $1. The lady also gave us a cool hinged top box that serves as a bench and said she used to use it for her kids coats and hats and they sit on it to put on their boots. She also gave us an old lawn chair, which was great because we only had one fold up one and a kid’s one, so now my big girl has one like mine. Then they had a box of waffle ball bats and balls. They gave my girl a bat and ball too.

As we continued on to fishing, I couldn’t help but think that stopping at that yard sale and finding the croquet set I had so desperately wanted for so long and my favorite childhood game was a sign that my life is right where it needs to be, and I was supposed to stop at that yard sale and acquire those things. Those things were there waiting for me to drive by and pick them up, I really think so.

We played the croquet that day, and it looks great in my kitchen, like home. Tonight we played the Rumikub. Now I am not going to be odd and say I hear dead people, like that movie. But as we played we got to the end and in my head I could hear my Nana say my name, like only she did, and say, “Let me see your tiles, let me help you.” She had always helped me near the end of the game when she could see if was just taking and discarding tiles and not doing anything significant, because that is when the game gets hard. I remember her pink frosted long curved nails would move all of the tiles around on the table like it were nothing to get rid of my last one or two. She was a wiz at that game. I heard her tonight, maybe she was speaking in my head or maybe I was remembering very loudly. I don’t know, but even my child noticed my eyes suddenly well up with tears. When she asked me what was wrong, I just smiled at her, said her name and, “Let me see your tiles, let me help you.” I showed her how to re-arrange the tiles on the table so she could get rid of her last two tiles. She won her first game of Rumikub, and I won too I got to “hear” my Nana again, accent and all. Now I know for sure I am on the path I am supposed to be on in life, and I am getting guidance from above.