Indiana Sidewalks

by Donna Poole

It was a waiting summer, an in between summer, a dreaming Indiana summer, back in 1973. Our firstborn, Angie, just a year old, loved to walk slowly down the sidewalks, stopping to examine every crack for bugs. Walks took a long time.

Angie liked it when I put her in the baby seat on the back of my bike and pedaled across town to see friends, or when the two of us played in the park next to our apartment. I scribbled dreams in my journal and read books on the apartment patio while Angie napped. Sometimes I wrote short stories.

All this free time was a luxury, an unfamiliar sensation. I’d started working when I was a kid. By the time I was a senior in high school I was working full time, and I continued that all through college, sometimes working as many as three jobs at once to pay my tuition. Now, college was finished. I worked only a part time job, had a baby who was no trouble, and an apartment easy to keep clean.

“I don’t think I’ll ever have another easy summer like this one,” I said to my husband, John.

My prophecy came true. The next summer, in 1974, when I was twenty-five, we left Indiana and came to Michigan to minister in our country church. 1973 was the last lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer I ever knew, the last one of lingering on sidewalks just because there was time to do it. Also, it was the last summer of sidewalks! We don’t have any on our gravel road.

Fifty plus years flew by, and I stood on another Indiana sidewalk. It was a warm, almost summery like morning this past Saturday. Graduation didn’t start until 9:00 AM, but I was in line with family by 7:30, waiting outside. Even in the large auditorium at Butler University in Indianapolis, seats were going to fill quickly as family and friends poured in to see the hard-working pharmaceutical and physician’s assistants students graduate.

But my heart was thinking about just one, Megan, our first-born grandchild, the first of fifteen. I’d waited in the hall at the hospital and seen her minutes after she’d been born. I’d babysat her and been amazed when she’d taught herself the alphabet. I’d danced around the kitchen with her in my arms and pushed her on swings. Then came all the school and sports events. I’d attended her high school graduation, but cancer had kept me from her college graduation where she’d graduated cum laude with a degree in bio-chem. For twenty-five years Megan had charmed me with her sweet and feisty personality, her blue eyes, the deep dimple in her cheek, her smile, and her fierce loyalty to God, family, and friends.

Standing on that Indiana sidewalk last Saturday, the memories rushed back, the funny sweet things she’d said and done as a baby, a toddler, a teen. How could she be twenty-five already, the age John and I had been when we’d left everything familiar to begin our new adventure as pastor and wife? The line moved just in time to stop my nostalgia from spilling out of my eyes and down my cheeks.

We got into the auditorium and threaded our way through the crowd to our seats. The music to Pomp and Circumstance began.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked around. There were so many students getting degrees and hoods.

I leaned over and jokingly whispered to Reece, our grandson, “I know God cares about all these people, but I don’t. I just care about Megan.”

He grinned. “I should feel guilty for saying that,” I whispered again, “but I don’t.”

He smiled again.

And then, I did feel guilty. Those students weren’t nameless faces in caps and gowns getting hooded on the platform anymore. They were people who, with integrity, knowledge, skill, and compassion, were going to change the world. They will be God’s hands, and when they can’t help heal, they’ll help comfort. I prayed for them.

And finally, there she was. Our granddaughter, Megan Michelle Poole, walking across the platform to get her diploma and her hood. I sat in that row with Megan’s parents, her other grandparents, her siblings, and two aunts and uncles. There wasn’t room for her entire huge family to come to graduation. I could feel the pride and the prayers going up from family there and far away. We had all, especially her parents, prayed and cheered Megan on, each in our own way, for two tough years.

Megan said the two-year physician’s assistant program is like drinking from a fire hose. It never stops. It’s relentless. Not everyone who begins the program finishes and gets their master’s degree. But Megan did!  

When Megan was little and fell and hurt herself, she’d jump up, tears in her eyes, and say, “I’m alright!”

Yes, Megan, you’re alright. You will always be alright. God will be with you long after some of the family in that graduation row are in heaven cheering you on from there.

After the ceremony we waited on the sidewalk to hug Megan and get pictures. And then a wonderful celebration weekend began! I think we’ll all remember it forever! It ended with us all standing on another sidewalk, getting one last picture, and hugging goodbye.

Megan will soon be stepping off her familiar sidewalks and beginning an adventure wherever God sends her to people who need her heart and her healing touch. I know heartbreak and joys will come to her. I know we can’t follow her. But just like when she was little, she might have tears in her eyes, but she’ll say, “I’m alright.” And she will be.

The end

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These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Four: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter