My feelings had been crushed when my father called upon Gordon, and not me, to speak at Sunday dinner in the pontifical Reverend Boynton’s presence. The blood had rushed into my defenseless fifteen-year-old face for all except, of course, my grandmother to see. Yet only she seemed to register my adolescent humiliation.
Monday, the next day, was unseasonably warm for April. Wanting my grandmother’s company, perspiring heavily, I reached the walk-up on Duvall Street after school shortly before four.
I could see when she opened the door that she was tired. Turning to leave, “You get some rest, Grandma. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I’ll not hear of it, son. Get yourself in here.” Revivified.
We sat in the magical little parlor and were silent for a time. As always, I waited for her to speak first. As always, she would somehow know.
Suddenly and without preface, she said, “He didn’t mean anything, Gray. He doesn’t mean to hurt you. His soul is not the giver of yours. Your spirit knows not from seeing, but from feeling. He is not like that. We won’t be. He can’t be.”
“Why am I always getting my feelings hurt?”
“See it as the price of your gift.”
“What gift?”
“To understand with the heart what cannot be seen with the eyes. To know what pictures to show and value in your head, and what pictures not to keep there.”
She sensed that I did not understand her. Then, out of the blue, she said, “You know that fellow Einstein, he never learned how to drive a car. Said a car was too complicated. What do you think that means?”
I was surprised by what she said, and did not know how to answer her.
“Most people live enclosed in small yards behind tall fences, son. They don’t look out. They don’t try to look out … They spend their lives looking at—even worshipping— the fence.”
“Is that why you won’t let Daddy get you a telephone?”
“Could be. I have lived across the ages. Why would I choose to stare at the fence? Hear that Boynton going on and on about buildings and air conditioners? Sittin’ on the ground. Playin’ with toys. Starin’ at the fence. Not so good in a man of God, eh?”
I was beginning to feel better. She was for me, I guess you’d say, affirming. It may have been then that I first began to understand the distinction between education and wisdom. I smiled and asked in jest, “How did you get so smart, Grandma?”
Smiling back at me, “It helps that I’m blind, I think.”
We were quiet for a while again, both looking, I imagined, at pictures in our heads—pictures on the other side of the fence.
“Grandma?”
“Yes, son.”
“You know what I’ve been wondering since you told me about the dream?”
“Tell me, son.”
“There have been other dreams—haven’t there?”
“Yes.”
“When did they start?”
“When I was just a little girl. I didn’t understand them at first, but I knew they were about things that had happened to me long, long ago. I never told anyone before you. I told you because I somehow always knew that you would understand and believe me.”
“You believe, Grandma, that the soul does not die?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had these dreams. They are real and not like dreams.” She sensed a puzzlement in me. “What, son?”
“One of my teachers said that half the people who’ve ever lived on Earth are alive today. That means that if old souls don’t die, there must still be a lot of new ones.”
My grandmother just smiled.