I love the way you can use Penless Messaging to share a memory with a friend. The kinds of memories that lift you up that you can carry with you wherever you go. Maybe that is the best gift anyone can give to someone else.  My grandmother saw it that way long before there were mobile phones.  She had a rotary phone I think.

I do remember how kind my grandmother was, but many of the details have faded over time.  She was a generous person and perhaps the best gift from her are those memories she left behind.  One vivid memory I do have of her was the way she used to rock me back and forth.  It is probably one of my first memories of her and a great gift; it was way back then and it is now, so many years later.

Sometimes when we stayed with her on summer vacations, it was hard to sleep at night.  As peaceful as it was the stillness of the air made me think of the monsters that must be under my bed.  One summer my grandma came in the room I was sleeping in, knowing that I was having trouble sleeping, and said she had a little gift to help me sleep.  She put a small tape recorder on my nightstand and when I turned it on she smiled and said “I taped the rain.”  She said she had thought of me last spring when on a particular day the rain’s gentle sound reminded her of me, and how she knew I did not always sleep well at her house.  So she taped the rain and gave it to me as a gift.  Every summer after that, when I came to visit, I would play that same recording.

I became so accustom to the recording that over time I could close my eyes and hear the rain even when I was not at her house.  So whenever I would get nervous at school before a test or before I would run a cross country race or for lots of reasons, I would close my eyes and listen to the gift of that rain from grandma, and it would take me back to her on those quiet nights.  It is such a soothing memory.

Not long after I downloaded my Penless app, I heard that rain, but this time it was not inside by head, it was outside.  It is that kind of rain that almost certain precedes a rainbow.  So I used Penless, and as grandma would say, “I taped the rain.”  A lot of my friends know this story, and now I can share the experience with them.  Last year when a particular friend of mine was about to take her SAT’s, she was so nervous.  On the day before her test, I bought her a card and wrote on it, “Let it rain.”  And I sent her my video of that gentle rain and its soothing sound.  I had taped the rain, and now I was sharing the rain the way my grandmother had shared it with me when I was nervous, with her love.  In the end, it sounds like my friend did well on the test, and today, I am happy for her.  I am happy about the lessons I learned from grandma, too.  I am happy for her love.  And, “I taped the rain.”  If you do not have Penless, you should download it now. If you have it, make a memory the way I have, and share it with a friend all on Penless.