Samantha

A woman takes her 20-year-old granddaughter to Stratford-upon-Avon, retracing the steps of a fateful trip on which she took her daughter 21-years ago.

I easily found my way back to The Bard, the 15th Century inn where my daughter, Samantha, and I had stayed 21 years ago, just across and down the cobbled-stone lane from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I pointed up to a window in the corner of the second story.

“That’s the room we stayed in,” I said to Nora, my 20-year-old granddaughter. Her eyes swept over the crumbling white stucco and age-darkened half timbers of the old building, which had remained indifferent to the 20th Century.

“Mom said you saved her life bringing her here.”

“She said what?”

Nora nodded. “And she told me how Dad’s parents were horrified when you said you were taking Mom to England to ‘recover her spirits.’ They said you absolutely could not take a mother away from her three babies and leave them with their father and grandparents.” Nora’s eyes creased in amusement, and the fine bow of her upper lip stretched flat into an open smile. “And you told them that was nonsense—that they were pioneer stock and had birthed and raised every creature God ever set on this earth, two-legged and four. They could certainly handle their own grandchildren for a few weeks!”