God-given Daughter

I was fourteen when my handsome and adored older cousin asked me to be his baby daughter’s godmother. The tradition went back at least three generations. My mother had been his godmother and he was my godfather. All of us were teenagers or younger when presented with such an awesome responsibility. As a loyal daughter of the Episcopal church, I was well aware of the duties of a godparent; although at fourteen, and living many miles away from that baby girl, the whole “raising her in the true faith” business didn’t seem to make much sense.  I don’t remember, and probably hadn’t even attended her baptism. They named her Holly, which I loved because it rhymed with my name.

There were two or three occasions when her family traveled to my hometown to visit my aunt, her grandmother. She was a little blonde pixie, a cute child. Yet she didn’t interest me very much. My world at sixteen or seventeen consisted of sports, school, boys, dances and preparing for college.

In short order, over the next ten years, my mother died, I was married, finished college and had three children. That little girl, far away in another state and often another country, was growing up, going to school and becoming a teenager. Life was full for both of us. I remember less than a handful of occasions when we saw each other, very briefly, in the succeeding thirty or forty years.

Fast forward to the spring of 2021. Seemingly out of the blue, Holly called to invite me as her guest on a yoga retreat in New Hampshire. The retreat was by a lake which we both loved; where we had each spent many summer weeks yet hardly ever at the same time. How could I say no? Yoga, at a favorite place and the opportunity to get to know my goddaughter after more than 60 years! I have no idea what prompted her to invite me, and I suspect that she felt somewhat the same. Yet, as we both realize now, it was meant to be. Something, or Someone was at work.

Holly was my summer miracle. Yes, we did some yoga. And some swimming and canoeing. Those were the underpinnings but not the blessings. We talked, and talked, and talked some more. We saw in each other another woman in our family who knew the secrets, the joys, the betrayals and the love; very little of which had been acknowledged in our family history. At the same time, my own daughter, living in Australia, was beginning to show the early symptoms of dementia while Holly’s mother was in her last months of living with Alzheimers. We were exactly what the other needed.

Holly and I see each other now frequently. Our journey together continues as our individual lives as mothers, grandmothers and wives unfold and change. Although fourteen years lie between us, at this stage of life, they are merely a wrinkle in time.

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