I didn't know this...

I saw it here... and then here... and when I clicked the link there, I saw the whole thing. I had to add my favorite. It's not long... or by anyone I know personally... but it brings back wonderful memories...

Growing up, and for most of my early childhood years, my paternal grandparents lived right across the street. My grandmom was the one that instilled my love of reading. She was kind and generous, and loving. I remember sitting on her lap while she read to me... or spending the night at her house, and reading Raggedy Ann stories.

I also remember this poem. She would tell it to me from memory. For the longest time I thought it was hers. Then one year she gave me a book that had been my dad's when he was a young boy. This had been one of his favorites, and one of hers.

The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do--
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are these for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

There are many more from A Child's Garden of Verses that I love, but this was the one she would tell me at bed time, while rubbing my back before I went to sleep.

I love you, Grandmom...