An Imaginary Friend, An Imaginary Tale

I started writing this post last Sunday before I got the news about my grandmother being very ill. For some reason I didn’t finish writing it. But for whatever reason I knew that I needed to finish it tonight. As I spend my last night in Florida and after spending the evening with my grandmother in the hospital, I knew that this was just the right time to publish it.

When I was a little girl I used to have two friends that would go with me everywhere. They stuck by me wherever I’d go, played with me whenever I got bored, and loved me unconditionally. These two friends, pookie and gogo, were imaginary friends. And though some people might call them fake or not real, they were some of the most genuine friends that I have ever remembered.

As Harlan gets older, I see myself in her more and more. She says things and it brings me back to my childhood.

A couple of months ago, Harlan and I were talking about something that I had when I was little. You could tell that she was a bit envious of it and she wanted it. Throughout the conversation she kept asking questions about it (for the life of me I cannot remember what it was.) Then all of the sudden Harlan blurted out with, “Well I have that at my granny’s house.”

Harlan calls my mom “Mimi” and MacKay’s mom “Jannie.” She doesn’t have a “granny.” I figured she must have heard about someone’s granny at school and just passed it off as that. A couple of days later Harlan saw a commercial of a toy that she wanted. She pointed and said “Oh, I have that at my granny’s house.” Wanting to know more about said granny, I started to ask her questions.

“Oh really, Har? Where does your granny live?”

“At Macy’s.”

“Oh yeah? Do you see her a lot?”

“Yeah. I go to my granny’s house on the 6 train.”

“Does Avery go with you?”

“Yeah!”

It was after that conversation that I realized that “granny” is someone that Harlan has created in her mind. It’s her “pookie and gogo.”

Granny has been a topic of conversation a lot lately. I’ve learned she has blue hair and that she is 26 years old. She got a lot of snow at her house (Macy’s) this past weekend and her and Harlan went out and played in it at night.

When I told Harlan that we had to make a trip down to Florida to see my grandma because she was sick, the first thing she asked was “Does she have a cough or a fever?” I tried to explain to her that she has a fever and other things that are making her sick and that’s the reason we needed to fly down.

“Well my granny is with your grandma.”

“She is?”

“Yes, she is there to help her feel better.”

As tears built in my eyes, I felt a sense of calmness overcome me. Even though “granny” is an imaginary friend, Harlan’s selfless attitude to let her granny comfort my granny gave me great joy.

Although Harlan doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, she’s asked all weekend how my grandmother is feeling. She makes sure to come up and tell me (out of the blue) that she hopes my grandma is feeling better and that her granny is there too. I don’t know where she gets it from, but this girl’s imagination is something that it truly special.

In this time of sadness and grief, it’s the imaginary tale of Harlan’s “granny” that is helping me cope with it all.