A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

A Walk with Enaw
by Fr. Kelley J. Lackey
December 13, 2006

I couldn't have been more than five years old. As was often the case, I found myself in the care of my great-grandmother. When you're little, your grandma is your best friend, so you don't mind spending a lot of time with her. My great-grandmother, known to all of her grandchildren as Enaw, was a small lady. Covered in fading freckles, her round face was framed in "stylish" gray-blue hair. Her eyes squeezed to narrow little lines whenever she smiled. She would often suck on her lower lip; I found this to be a strange, nervous habit complimented only by the squealing of her hearing aids when she adjusted their volume. when she lounged around the house she wore one of many pairs of satin pajamas. However, going out required a nice dress and her good, white-beaded purse. Special events called for a pair of her best screw-on earrings.

It was a warm, spring afternoon and so Enaw and I decided to take advantage of the fair weather and walk to the churchyard a few blocks down the street. As we took off on our adventure, the sunlight danced on the little particles of sand in the sidewalk. The warm breeze carried the scents of fresh life as it pushed the newly budding oak trees back and forth. like some kind of invisible tug-o-war. o brown squirrel searched a neighbor's yard for something it had hidden and now lost. Doctor Lightfoot, an older man who lived across the street, was out in his front yard playing with his two wiener dogs. When I looked at the dogs I thought they were a pair of shoes walking around on their own. The faint sounds of nearby 32nd Street filtered through the noise of martins that had returned from the south. As we walked through the spongy grass of her yard to the sidewalk, Enaw said, "Now take my hand, sweetheart. and let me walk closest to the curb"

I asked, "Why, Enaw?"

"Because, honey," she replied, in a concerned grandmother's voice, "sometimes people are in a hurry and don't watch where they're driving." So off we went on our afternoon journey.

We passed by a girl sitting in a swing on her front porch, as she did almost everyday. I knew at that time that there was something different about her, but I didn't know what it was. Years later, I would come to find out that she had died of complications related to Down's syndrome. When we had walked a little farther down our route, the sun's rays suddenly caught something in the middle of the sidewalk several feet before us. I wondered what the little beacon could be. As we got closer to it, we stopped so that I could reach down and take the object. "What did you find, sweetheart?" Enaw asked with mock excitement in her voice for my newfound treasure. It looked to me as if it were a shinny, white gumball, wrapped with orange swirls. "A little ball," I said with puzzlement.

"No, that's called a marble, honey. Put it in your pocket so that you don't lose it," Enaw said with a smile. I pushed the marble down into my jeans pocket and we continued or walk.

About a block down from where I discovered the marble, we could see Saint Mary's Church. The church wasn't very old.

In fact, among the old houses, it looked as if it were a spaceship parked among Model Ts. A great, marble statue of Saint Mary loomed over the entrance of the church. The pathway to the front door was bordered with flowerbeds that had been freshly planted with tender, new flowers. The new life in the beds were contrast to the giant trees that bolted here and there out of the churchyard's grass. Enaw found that the edge of one of the flowerbeds was just the right height for her to sit and rest her knees after our journey, so I shot off among the trees to see what I could find. I discovered little strips of brown river rock crossing the yard from the church building to the street. I assume now that they were used for water drainage. In my young mind, however, they became train tracks and I became a train going from station to station on my imaginary railroad. As soon as Enaw was finished resting and I was done playing, we walked back home.

For any casual bystander in life, this would seem a pretty uneventful day. But as my life seems to get more complex with each passing day, it's sometimes nice to stop and take that walk with my Enaw again.

Enaw is long since gone, but I still take her memory with me wherever I go. And because I still haven't lost it, sometimes I take the marble too.

About the author:
Fr. Kelley J. Lackey II is the rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Emporia, Kansas. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the General Theological Seminary in New York City