She talks about her dreams as if they are already beginning to take shape — a life imagined in bright strokes, full of meaning and promise. There is certainty in her voice, the kind that doesn’t yet know how easily the world can complicate things.

I listen, and I am taken back.

I remember dreaming about my own life the same way — imagining how it would all turn out, believing in fairytale endings, in love that would last, in a life that would unfold with purpose and grace. I remember holding ideals close, convinced that wanting something deeply was enough to make it real.

I think of the road I have travelled since then. The unexpected turns. The chapters I never planned for. The ways my life became both harder and richer than the story I first told myself. Not a fairytale — something truer, layered, and lived with all its turns.

As my granddaughter speaks, another memory surfaces: my grandmother listening to me all those years ago. How she must have recognised the hope in my voice. How she must have known more than she said. How she chose silence over correction, faith over caution.

I wonder what she felt, hearing me speak so freely of the life I imagined.

My granddaughter’s hands move as she talks, shaping possibilities I cannot yet see. I do not reach in to edit them. I do not trim them down to size. Dreams need room before they need realism.

So I listen. Fully. Lovingly.
I let her believe.

Our words cross gently — hers moving forward with confidence, mine circling back with understanding. Time folds in on itself, and I feel the long line of women behind and ahead of me, each listening in turn.

And in that moment, I understand:
nothing has been lost.
It has only been passed on.

The dreaming. The believing. The quiet act of being heard.
This, too, is inheritance — and it matters more than we ever realise.