The Zayde Chronicles

It was the perfectly silly Zayde game.  I covered Bina up with the blanket and she’d pretend to be asleep. I pulled the blanket back and she giggled and announced “awake”.  We did this 10 or 11 times until it was time for another game.  But as she climbed off the couch, I realized that the blanket we had been playing with was, in fact, an Afghan knitted, over 55 years ago, by Nana Francis, my grandmother, her great-great-grandmother.   Among our tasks as Nana’s grandchildren was to partner with her in the creation of afghans by holding up the hanks of yarn as she wound them into balls. We’d sit on the small ottoman across from her in her lounge chair, two hands raised and moving back and forth as the wool strands traversed the distance between us.  I close my eyes, and I am still there; sitting erect, synchronizing the movement of my arms with the flow of the yarn. The threads of Nana’s afghan stretch back hundreds of years. ...

Part One: Getting Ready The preparations for Bina’s week-long visit to our home began three weeks (or more) before her arrival. It wasn’t as if we needed to put the crib together or install the safety gate atop the stairs three weeks in advance – but we couldn’t contain our excitement.  A whole week with our expanded nuclear family.  Six adults, whose presence would be fully eclipsed by a 16-month old toddler.   The countdown in the context of what, otherwise seems to be the increasingly dramatic acceleration of the passing of time, seemed to slow day by day. New toys and board books arrived almost daily from Amazon.  Having completed the “ Bina Trail ” in our backyard months before, We searched Amazon for sales on Christmas lights to string along the paths and then spent hours hanging the lights among the trees. We traveled to a used children’s clothing and toy store in Kennesaw and bought a small inflatable baby pool and 200 plas...