Seeing the loving bond of parent and child under the hardest circumstances

It was the one-week anniversary of Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapping, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what was in her heart.

Not the cardiac pacemaker that regulated her physical heart, but the heart of feelings.

“Mommy, you are a strong woman,” said her daughter, “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, in a video post. “We love you and will not rest until you are found.”

The love, the angst and the devotion in her voice portrayed what was in her heart.

It also told a lot about her mother, the woman who had nurtured and inspired an unbreakable bond.

Nancy’s sweet face and gentle demeanor reminded me of the women in the poetry class I taught many years ago at the former Scripps Retirement Home in Altadena, many of whom, at the time, were the same age as Nancy is now.

Gracious at their core, some were retired teachers and nurses who believed life was a gift and used it well, the kind of people one was honored to have as a friend. I sense Nancy had a lot in common with them.

“What’s in your heart today?” I once asked my class just before Valentine’s Day. The women ranged in age from 82 to 96, and I wanted to know what they held dear at this last stage of life. Their poems were personal statements of simple lives well lived.

“Papa, you always ‘enoughed us’” Pearl Fillmore, 85, wrote with gratitude in “An Open Letter to my Papa.”

Although Pearl had never been a parent, she understood that a parent’s job was to give their children enough love, guidance, understanding and kindness. She knew because she had been given the gift of enough.

From the devotion she has shared with the world, I think Savannah and her siblings feel their mother “enoughed them.”

As I write this, there is no definitive news of Nancy’s whereabouts. I hope her quiet strength and faith have their arms around her.

Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com