A Lasting Legacy

Written by Anna Waters-Massey (AKA Nanna Anna)

On the 22 March last year I become a grandmother for the first time to a divine little cherub called Indigo Valerie. She stole our hearts immediately.  Now what should I be called in this new role? I definitely didn’t want to be called Grandma or Granny, although when you break it down to ‘grand’ and ‘mother’ it actually has different connotations. After googling the definition of ‘grand’ I decided I actually didn’t mind being referred to as ‘magnificent, awe inspiring, impressive, superb and splendid’ so have adopted the essence of Grandmother but have opted to call myself Nanna Anna. And so began my new role and a bunch of feelings I had no idea were coming for me.

Being a grandmother has unleashed a tidal wave of love I didn’t expect, both for darling little Indigo and also a new depth of love for my daughter, Cleo, as I watch her in her new role of Mum. Cuddling Indi, smelling her, kissing her soft skin and marvelling at her perfection has sent me reaching for old photos and videos of my own kids and reliving special moments with them. This perfect little girl has spiked my emotions in a way I never expected, not only because she is a carbon copy of my own daughter as a baby, but because of the swell of fierce love that has engulfed me for her. If I don’t see her for a day, I am texting demanding photos or video updates. I’m constantly having to declutter my phone storage to make space to save more and I have a newfound addiction to Facetime. If my husband hears me suddenly talking baby talk, he rushes into the room to join the Facetime call where we proceed to make idiots of ourselves pulling faces, blowing raspberries and clapping hands. Princess Indigo has us all literally dropping whatever we are doing and running to her.

My own childhood memories have surfaced, and I recall all the things I loved that my parents did for me. Sadly I had no grandparents as they died when I was young and lived on the other side of the world, so I am determined to give Indi that experience I never had. I had a large family with 6 brothers and our parents took us all on regular Sunday drives, adventures to rain forests, holidays at the beach and encouraged our creative endeavours and free spirits. Yep, we were free range kids, out the door in the morning playing with the neighbourhood kids and back home in time for dinner. This got me thinking about creating a kid’s animated series that Indi could watch harking back to those childhood memories of mine.

Once I got the idea I started writing and came up with 6 episodes aimed at children under 6 years, full of fun, songs, educational concepts and cute characters. My husband, the newly crowned ‘Poppa Soy’, is a 3D animator, so for the next 8 months we worked every day to create the series called Forest Road. We enjoyed the process of sifting through memories to include them as visual nods to both our own childhoods and those of our own two kids. Two of the main characters are siblings who resemble our own children, Cleo and Joey, with big heads and eyes, blonde pony tails and glasses. We have included phrases I used to say to my kids when I woke them each day, a song my Mum used to sing to me, a teddy my daughter still treasures, our family’s fave footy team on a t-shirt and Indigo’s name on a billboard. We even named the series after the street I grew up in, Forest Road, and named the preschool in the series after my husband’s old school. It tickled us, but would it entertain our little granddaughter?

Finally when we had a few episodes completed, Indigo turned 10 months and we nervously sat her on her Mum, Cleo’s knee and played Forest Road for her. Why was I nervous? She’s a baby! But in my heart I knew the passion and heart behind this project was to create something special for Indi and I just hoped she would like it. Whether it was the colours, the cute characters, the songs or the familiar voices (my husband, Cleo and I had voiced all the characters), I’m not sure but Forest Road was a hit. My eyes got a little foggy watching Indigo giggling, flapping her arms and engaging fully while watching the screen. I must admit both my husband and I were flooded with relief and didn’t realise we had been holding our breath and a tad nervous about how it would be received.

Having passed the first and most important test – the Indigo test, we then unleashed Forest Road to the world on YouTube and have been overwhelmed by the positive responses from parents, kids and educators. What began as a cute little project from our hearts for our granddaughter has now become a series that keeps growing and has amassed thousands of views.

Yesterday after squishing her, smooching her and inhaling her deliciousness I helped load Indi into the car with her parents and she started to grizzle. ‘Quick, put Forest Road on the phone for her,’ called out my daughter. As soon as Indi heard the first seconds of the opening song, as if by magic, she immediately stopped crying and smiled. Now I’m not saying that we two grandparents have created magic with this series but, I am reminded of the definition of ‘grand’ once more and ’magnificent’, ‘awe inspiring’ and ‘impressive’ does spring to mind!

If you’d like to check out Forest Road just head to YouTube and binge it for free. We’d love you to subscribe while you’re there to help us show up in the algorithm. Every episode of Forest Road covers a different learning concept and has an original song. You will find two playlists – one for the full episodes and a separate one for all the songs. Parents have asked us to release the songs separately so their kids can listen in the car so they will be available on Spotify, Apple and other sites from the 23^{rd of} Feb.

Also if you’d like to follow me and my creative endeavours the links are below.

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Forest Road QR code

Anna Waters-Massey is a writer, actor and voice artist from the Gold Coast. She loves entertaining people and making them smile with her writing, song parodies and acting work.