"Hey, Grandma!"

"Well hello there darling! You’ve grown since I have last saw you, you’re almost as tall as me already!" Said the grandmother to a six year old girl. Lifting her up and and carrying her to the kitchen.

"Mom! Be careful, you’re not as young as you used to be!" Exclaimed her worried son from the door way.

"Oh don’t worry about me! Go, have fun on your date. You deserve a night out with your wife!"

"Are you sure ma?"

"Yes, go! We’ll be fine, won’t we sweetheart?" Said the grandma.

"Mhh hmm! Bye, love you daddy!" Said the excited child.

Reluctantly the father left, gently closing the door behind him.

"So, what do you want to do?"

"Well, I am kinda hungry… Do you have cookies??”

"As a matter of fact, I do! Just up here!" As the grandmother was saying this, she reached up to the cupboard. As she raised her arm, her sleeve fell slightly exposing many old scars. Noticing this, she grabbed her sleeve and covered up her wrist again, but not before her grand baby asked

"Nanny, what are all those marks from?"

"Ah, you have just spotted some of my battle wounds, love."

"Battle wounds…" Said the child, mulling the thought over in her head. "You must have fought off a lot of bad guys! You’re a hero, aren’t you?"

"Here," she replied handing the young girl a cookie "lets go sit down." The two of them walked down the hall to the TV room. Without turning it on, the pair sat down on the old floral sofa which has seen more than a few spills over the years.

"So, my grandma, a superhero! WOW!”

“Well honey, I am not exactly a hero…”

Quickly dismissing this, the child said “so were you in a war? How many bad guys were there? How long were you battling, oh I bet there were pirates, were there pirates?!”

"One question at a time dear. Yes, I guess you could call it a war of sorts. There were two sides, me against everyone and everything else."

"Wow!" Said the child in mystified amazement."So your scars are from every time somebody hurt you/’

"Yes and no. Nobody every physically hurt me, but they did cause the scars."

"How does that work?"

"The thing is, at the end of the war, I found out that nobody was really against me. It was only me. Me against me." With these words, tears started to slowly form in the corner of the older woman’s eyes. "It was only me. Only me."

Knowing it was not a good time to ask any more questions, the girl simply hugged her grandmother. Tears now freely falling down her face, the grandmother welcomed the feeling of her grand baby’s arms around her. After the grandmother had calmed down a bit, the small child peeled out of the embrace. Looking her grandmother right in the eye she muttered “grandma, I don’t care if there wasn’t any pirates. You’re still a superhero to me.”