My niece, Madisen, has been gone for most of the summer in Barcelona. She’s been studying abroad. 

She was coming by my place to see us on her way through town and I was so excited to see her after all this time. 

I was tracking her progress on Find My Friends. You all know about Find My Friends right? It is an app on an iPhone that lets you keep track of where your friends are if they let you:)  Our whole family tracks each other on Find Friends. Anyway….

Tracking her travels to my house got me thinking about our Nanny Jean. When we were kids, our Nanny lived in Walker and we lived in the Twin Cities. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive or so. This was before cell phones, long before cell phones. We would call her when we left the house and when we got to her driveway, 3 1/2 hours away, she was always there standing by the mailbox.

I never really thought much about it until yesterday, when Madisen came to see me. I wonder now, did Nanny walk to the mailbox, look down the road and then walk back to the house? Did she do that a bunch of times while she waited for our arrival? How could she know if we’d stopped for gas or food? Could she hear our car coming and high tail it down to the mailbox? She really had no idea what time we would actually arrive, but she was always there, at the end of the driveway waiting. I can see her in my memories, clapping her hands when we pulled up to the mailbox. 

She would have loved having Find Friends. She could have just kept an eye on her phone, staying in the air conditioning with her knitting and peppermint schnapps. Watching our every move through Brainerd, Nisswa, and Pequot Lakes. She could have snuck to the mailbox just as we were pulling up. Just like I did with Madisen yesterday.

Well, I didn’t make it all the way to the mailbox, but I did greet her in the driveway! Thanks for the memory Nan!