Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe~

Sometimes a grandmother’s common sense can teach their grandchildren that life’s simple pleasures can bring them the most happiness, and that they cannot buy it with money. Like going on walks and showing them the beauty in nature.

I preferred my grandmothers homemade toys, which she created with her own hands, over the expensive toys my parents bought me. From the age of five, I can remember her writing letters to me. She introduced me to world-famous classics and the library. By the time I was six I was able to read classics like Oliver Twist and Great Expectations because my dad had read them to me over and over. I’m not sure if I read them or if I memorised them.

My grandmother lived far away and would come to visit us and when she arrived I was glade to see her and sad when she had to leave. She felt the same. I missed her right away. But then, one week after she left, a letter would arrive.

Dear Granddaughter, I miss you a lot and remember absence makes hearts grow fonder? Write to me when you feel low or bored. So I started writing to her and I poured out all my problems into those letters. One of my favorite letters that I wrote to her was when I was in second grade and I explained to her that an older girl was being mean to me at school and called me a brat.

 I wrote to my grandma: Grandma, I’m being treated unkindly at school and I feel hurt. She wrote back: Dear Granddaughter, Just follow my instructions when the older mean girl says something that is hurtful to you. Tell her that you are hard of hearing and ask her to repeat what she said again and again. She will repeat it. Keep telling her that you can’t hear her, and she will get fed up and leave you alone. I followed grandma’s advice and it worked.

Then in my first year of high school we were having our annual health fitness week. I was good at sports but not at rope climbing and gymnastics. All my class mates were stronger in the upper parts of their bodies than me. I couldn’t complete rope climbing or any of the gymnastic part of the testing.

I wrote to Grandma: Grandma, I’m not good in sports, and Mom is making me sign up  for sport. She says sports and rope climbing are two different categories. She wrote back: Dear Granddaughter, I heard a song recently that had a wonderful message. There may be mountain peaks you have to climb on, there may be rivers fast and wide you may have to ride on. Unless you dream, unless you try, how will you know how far you can fly? Remember these words and believe in yourself. It turned out that because of my mom and grandmother I continued to pursue sports. I was good at sports. However I never did climb a rope.

Letters passed between us every week and she often sent quotes by great people from newspapers and magazines. All of them, in one way or another, told me the same thing:” Believe in yourself, then you can reach even the farthest star.” I kept all of Grandma’s letters in a file. When I felt low and sad, I would read them one by one. They lifted my spirits, and I came back to my self again. The lessons my grandma taught in her letters will forever remain the most valuable and treasured ones.

Grandma never owned a computer and she didn’t foresee in the future that her granddaughter would be passing on some of her advice on a website. I wonder how will our granddaughters be passing on their grandmother’s advice in the future? What is going to replace computers?